


Stranger Things

by OneSmartChicken



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BAMF!Stiles, Future Fic, Gen, I have no idea how that happened, I just realized the Sterek is very very very only implied, M/M, Magic!Stiles, Military, Pre-Slash, SO, Stiles-centric, Violence, War, a lot of inaccuracies, a lot of random time skips, and a lot of parenthesis, fictional war, magic in general, secret government agencies, sentient jungles, soldier!Stiles, sort of, the OCs wound up more a part of this fic than the pack ffs, the depictions of violence really aren't that graphic, there should be slash in the sequels?, very very stiles-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 03:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1076257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneSmartChicken/pseuds/OneSmartChicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war started when Stiles was 22 and he was alongside the first line of recruits. Shortly after, Stiles disappeared, to be declared MIA two years later.</p>
<p>But that's not where the story ends. Hell, that's not even the story. That's just one side of the 12-sided dice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In which I bullshit my way along, paying absolutely no attention to how the military actually works. All inaccuracies are entirely on purpose, even if not knowingly.  
> This is all intended to be very dark and gritty, or at least as much as I can manage(I am not a dark and gritty person). There's still totally going to be a happy ending and probably fluff because I like happy things and I can't help myself. But first meet scarred-by-life!Stiles, also lots of vague details about a fake war. I feel the need to reiterate that this is pretty unrealistic and not just because there's a massive amount of supernatural elements. This is like an action movie where the plot makes no sense if you think about it too hard but (hopefully) you enjoy it anyway.
> 
>  
> 
> THERE ARE QUITE A FEW ORIGINAL CHARACTERS IN HERE. I DON'T KNOW WHERE THEY CAME FROM. THEY JUST FUCKING SHOVED THEIR WAY IN AND I GOT ATTACHED SO I DIDN'T KICK THEM OUT. I also sort of didn't pay a lot of attention to things like seasons and months while writing this, because I live in Florida and we don't have seasons. I realized when I mentioned Christmas(you'll see it, it's in there) that I should have been thinking of seasons at least somewhat, but then I sort of said fuck it and...yeah. I'm historically a "fuck it" sayer. If things don't add up, uh, wow holy shit you paid a lot of attention didn't you? I did not. Feel free to tell me if I messed up in the comments though. I might even fix it.

16-year-old Stiles Stilinski(given and middle name omitted) had been a bundle of sarcasm, energy and ADHD. A boy who flailed, caught in a constant state of half-panic with little in the way of self-preservation instincts. He was a constant source of noise, falling and yelling and rambling through every moment of his life. He was a clown, comedic relief, admittedly clever and strategically minded but easily overlooked by prettier faces and broader shoulders. When 16-year-old Stiles held still, when he stopped talking, he disappeared. No one saw the quiet Stiles. He rarely was though, rarely felt the need for quiet, rarely ceased with the flailing and noise-making.

For 30-year-old Stiles Stilinski, however, it was a well-honed skill.

At 18, Stiles packed up and moved across the country to a ridiculously good school that gave him a scholarship for a random paper he wrote and equally randomly submitted to a contest, which he just so happened to win. He majored in botany; wolf's bane peaked his interest, and the fact his mom used to love gardening didn't hurt. He Skyped daily with all of the pack, his dad, Allison--pretty much everyone. Being so far away from everyone sucked, but the marvels of modern technology kept them all content.

Then, when he was 20, his dad got shot. Not fatal, but bad enough to elicit an early retirement. Stiles offered to move back home, but his dad moved out there with him instead, where they lived off the scholarship, John's retirement, and Stiles' side job at a coffee shop. It was all well-and-good for a while--and then the war began. The sheriff moved back to Beacon Hills, moved in with Melissa who he'd been practically dating for years anyway. Stiles didn't come with. When asked, John just shook his head. He told Melissa and Scott that his son was "recruited," and Scott whispered the news to the pack. It was so much more than that though.

At 22, Stiles disappeared, and was never heard from again, his last contact nothing more than a phone call to John from a training center, telling him he was getting his orders tomorrow. And then...nothing. Well, until a man in uniform walked up and knocked on the McCall-Stilinski home door, and handed the former sheriff a flag and paperwork printed with the letters "M.I.A." But that wasn't exactly "hearing" from Stiles.

He would have been 24. Instead he was missing, legally declared dead(no one who went "missing" in this war was ever found. Not alive, at least) and the pack grieved, and then they moved on. There was nothing else they could do. There was military propaganda on every channel, and all new news was bad news. The world was grim, but people still kept living, as best they could. No matter how bad it seems, there's no stopping time, no matter how hard you try, and the pack had to accept that. They did their best.

It took 8 years, all told, give or take, for the war to end. For a new president to step up and negotiate peace when the enemy's leaders were all dead. Coincidentally, the day the nation celebrated peace, it would have been Stiles' 30th birthday. The pack shared a solemn drink, and cheered to the man they'd all loved.

 

 

***

It was convenient, being legally dead. Not fun, but not much was fun after all that. At least he knew his dad was looked after, knew the military kept sending him money, knew the pack would look after him in the ways money couldn't. He would have gone home, would have had to, couldn't leave his dad alone. But his dad wasn't alone, and Stiles, well, Stiles really couldn't go home.

Funnily enough, Stiles himself thought he was dead for a while, before that letter was even printed. Him and his squad's very first mission, barely more than a training exercise, and wouldn't you know it but the damn enemy wasn't even human. Stiles actually laughed when he realized why his comrades were getting picked off so easily. It was a haunted, maniacal laugh, but he couldn't help it. There was just no fucking escaping it, was there? A thousand miles away and he was still the one sitting there, figuring out the monster of the week.

No one listened to him of course, snarled at him to _be quiet_ when he tried to help. And then it was just him and three other men, Eduardo, James, and Kent, and, well, they listened to him then. Not much else to do, but wait and die, or listen to the madman. Crazy starts to sound pretty reasonable when there's not much else to choose from.

They abandoned their post, abandoned everything but their clothes and their weapons, and dove into the forest. They hunted the beast in its own territory, in the place where it was strongest, and they won. Stiles and Eddy were the rangers, the snipers(Eduardo was American bred, through-and-through, but his Mama liked her roots, wanted her boy to grow up like his Granddaddy; there in that jungle, he learned he'd never be like his Granddaddy though, and Stiles knew what it was like to need a new name, so Eddy it was). Kent had a damn good knack for explosives, one the military should have been exploiting far sooner, and one Stiles rather enjoyed putting to use. And James, well, he was 6'6", used to be a quarterback, before he got it into his head to fight for his country, "like a Southern boy ought." He made a good tank, even against a supernatural enemy. A wendigo, of course; Stiles confirmed his suspicions when James rammed a jagged blade into its gut, Stiles watching through his scope. The thing let out a scream that would haunt every one of them for the rest of their lives, and Stiles and Eddy pumped it full of bullets. It took James' knife when it stumbled back, but James didn't bother trying to reclaim it, just dove for cover as the wendigo fell into a fiery death at Kent's hands. Then James got his knife back. It was a damn fine knife, and they all felt a compulsion to get a good look at the ashen remains of the beast that killed so many of their men.

Which left them one wendigo down, but casually lost in the middle of the jungle, miles further into enemy territory than they should have been.

Stiles started keeping track of the days with tallies on his rifle.

Eleven scratches in, Eddy got bit by a fucking snake. Stiles cut off its head and they soldiered on. Five tallies later, three of which were spent with James carrying more and more of Eddy, Stiles took his friend's dog tags and hung them around his own neck with whispered promises to give them to Eddy's "Mama." They took his ammo, then left him for the animals. There wasn't anything else they could do. Not much use in burying the dead when you'll probably be one of them sooner rather than later.

On the full moon, Stiles stared up at it and thought of home. They were near a village, could smell the humanity in the air, that indefinable combination of scents that spoke of civilization, even the primitive variety. They were getting hopeful, thinking maybe in the morning they'd find some kind of salvation, at least get to look at some faces other than their own. Hell, they wouldn't have minded just going native at that point, turning their backs on the army and getting used to the local life. And then a small coven of what Stiles figured were the native equivalent of witches rushed out of the jungle, hands raised and full of fire. They put a bullet between each of their eyes and moved on, only getting "a bit crisp around the edges," as James put it, for their troubles.

At thirty-six tallies, Kent sat by their little fire, staring at a spider bite. He laughed, a lot like how Stiles had when the wendigo was picking them off, an eternity or so ago. James was crying, big, heavy, silent tears that would have broken Stiles' heart if it wasn't so damn numb by then. But that numb heart was still just a stubborn bastard at the core. So Stiles put his hand over the bite and decided he wasn't going to lose anyone else to this goddamned jungle. His veins burned and his throat screamed and when he spat out a mouthful of not-saliva into the ground, the dead leaves sizzled and melted. He kicked new cover over the black spot and removed his hand, leaving behind fresh, pink skin. The men stared at him, and then they looked back into the fire. They'd seen stranger shit in their month in the jungle, more than the wendigo and the witches. At least this strangeness wasn't out for their blood.

They found a battlefield at forty-nine tallies. They delivered two mercy killings and collected as much ammo and supplies as they could carry. They scoured the small encampment and spent a night in an actual tent, the smoke from their fire almost blocking out the smell of death. It was only a few hours old, this battlefield, but already the hot, humid jungle was taking its tole. James made a cross from two guns and some strips of cloth amidst the bodies. He whispered Christian prayers as hot tears rolled down his tanned cheeks and into a ragged beard. Kent had never been religious, but he found a broken chain of prayer beads amongst the dead(enemy or ally, it didn't matter at that point) while looking for ammo, and he remembered some of his Grandmother's beliefs better than he thought. He murmured Hindu blessings and watched the sun set as he turned a handful of beads over and over between his fingers. Stiles sat on the highest vantage point he could get and looked on in silence, braiding together strands of familiar purple flowers he'd found growing nearby. The military-standard gloves were plenty thick as far as protection went. He tied them around his friends' weapons and warned them not to touch; wolf's bane was poisonous to just about anything. That night, as he covered their weapons in flowers and dipped their bullets in crushed petals, he told them about werewolves. On a hunch.

A werewolf dragged its claws down Stiles' neck and grinned on the day Stiles added his sixty-seventh scratch. He looked into that rogue's eyes, and felt a sick sense of satisfaction when he heard James' wolfsbane-soaked blade _squelch_ as it drove up under the wolf's ribs and straight to the heart. They were good at killing strikes by now. As it turned out aconite(monk's hood, wolf's bane--Stiles knew all the names, even knew the names for most of the almost upsetting-ly wide variety of strands there were) was pretty damn prevalent in the area they were making their way through. Which was ironic--or was it coincidental? Damn, Stiles never could keep that straight--considering the place was also pretty well crawling with werewolves. All rogue, so far as they'd seen, and fortunately not big fans of teamwork.

The three of them got damn good at killing werewolves. It reminded Stiles of the Argents. He told his friends more stories, and got stories in return, although theirs involved a lot less werewolves. James was a "true Southern boy," from smack dab in the middle of Texas. He went to college on a football scholarship, and but he wasn't exactly a prodigy. Wasn't mean enough, he admitted with a rueful smile. He never really liked tackling, and, well, being gay wasn't such a huge deal anymore, but guys in the locker room still got edgy. His parents were deep-South Christians, but they loved their son even if he was gay. His father said good men didn't need rules, and James was a good man. Stiles grinned at the reference, and they bonded a little over Doctor Who in the middle of a jungle that was out for their blood, even though James only liked it cause his Dad did and Kent had only seen about half of the new series(Stiles had seen every episode, before he signed up at least, and went to two conventions during college; the city was the kind that had a lot of conventions of all sorts).

Kent's parents were Indian--Hindu, South-Asian, not mis-labeled Native Americans--, all red-skinned and traditional, but Kent was adopted, in America. He was mostly of Native American decent apparently, which he'd always thought was funny. His parents didn't see the humor in it, but the way Kent told it made Stiles and James laugh. Kent was straight as an arrow, and admitted he'd been less-than-welcoming of "differences" in the past. His grandmother called gays abominations and Kent used to spend every summer with her("She's a sweet old lady, really," he sighed into the fire, "But old as dirt. Can't teach them old dogs new tricks." They were all three starting to sound alike, with no one else to talk to.) His parents weren't so vocal, but they were disapproving enough that he wound up prejudiced before he was old enough to think for himself. He didn't care anymore though. Life in the jungle made what was really important in life pretty clear. He was going to be a doctor, because that was what his father did and his parents assumed that's what he would do and he didn't really see any good reason to fight it. He was 25, nearly a doctor, when the war started and he and a few of his buddies decided to sign up. One of them dropped out during training. Two of them were killed by the wendigo.

Kent was engaged, to a woman he'd only spoken to on the internet, but who was heartily approved of by his family. She was sweet, and he'd never seen her face but he knew she'd be beautiful. He said even if she looked like an elephant, she'd be beautiful. He asked them to be part of the service, when they got home, if she'd still have him. If she had waited. They agreed without hesitation and no one mentioned that they probably wouldn't make it.

On tally one-hundred-fifty-two, they stepped out of the jungle and into an army encampment. Friendly. Well, once they stopped pointing their guns at the dirty, scarred men who stumbled into their midst. The three were calm, in-control, unafraid. Mostly calm. They may have cried a little, and Stiles could see both his friends were about ready to break down with relief as Stiles showed off his dogtags(all four) and the bits of his uniform that still looked proper-ish. They refused to relinquish their weapons, nearly started a fight right there, but just so happened that one of the men was an old buddy of James'. Thank God for Southern boys and bizarre coincidences, Stiles thought, the word 'God' overlaid with all the feelings for deities and religions he'd gotten from Kent and Eddy and James, from his parents and friends and every person he'd ever known. Stiles didn't know if he believed in any gods, but the way he figured it--well, he'd seen stranger. So he thanked them, for being on their damn side for once.

Stiles found out his tally was off by at least fifty days(their memory of things like dates was a bit iffy by that point), which didn't surprise him so much. He laughed though, said, "Hey boys, I'm 23 now, we missed my birthday." No one else at this new camp, full of clean men who didn't know about witches and ghouls and demons, innocent in a way such already battle-scarred individuals shouldn't have seemed, knew what to say to that, but James and Kent laughed too. Kent had missed his twenty-sixth, and as it so happened, James' twenty-first was two weeks away.

When they had been with the camp for four days, the men finally caved and admitted, with understandable reluctance, that they hadn't had radio contact with anyone for close to two months. They were clearly expected the three men to flip their shit, to yell and scream and curse fate, but instead they just shared the same knowing look they'd shared so many times before. Stiles was the one who shrugged, and James the one who grinned and reassured them. "Figured there had to be some kind of catch," James said, and Kent muttered something not-English that Stiles suspected would have made his grandmother scold him.

They were still with the camp when it came along, so everyone joined in with getting James drunk for his twenty-first, even though there wasn't all that much booze to go around. Stiles spiked it with just a little of a hallucinogenic but otherwise (mostly) harmless plant from the jungle to help it go around(he still thought it was amusing that his seemingly useless-for-the-military major turned out to be one of their most valuable resources).

When werewolves came upon them, a bright morning three weeks after they joined these relatively fresh-faced men and women, the three of them laughed again. Because fate was a bitch, they explained when a wild-eyed woman eyed them like they were mad. Foolish woman. Of course they were mad. What else could they be?

The werewolves expected easy pickings, and they almost had it. The three of them were still in the medic's tent, being treated for malnourishment and fuck-knows what else(bacterial infections, bug bites, rashes, _bullshit_ basically. The medic said half of it should have killed them, said they were a miracle. They just looked at each other and grinned. "Heard stranger things," Kent said, and no one but they understood.) But they heard that well-known howl, and they got up off their asses, picked up the weapons that were never far from them(the medic whispered about psychological diagnosis, but they didn't care; maybe it was paranoia, but when the whole damn world actually was out to get them, did it really matter?) and they got to work. There were fifteen werewolves, more than enough to handle two hundred-some men and women with no idea how to take down a werewolf, although they'd have lost a few wolves themselves to luck and persistence. Since one was an alpha, Stiles guessed they'd been intending to make up for lost numbers with some of the soldiers. Instead the camp lost 20 good men, and the ragtag pack died. But James got bit in the process, as well as four other soldiers, including a woman whose name turned out to be Laura. Stiles didn't tell her why he thought that was funny. She didn't ask anyway; no one really asked why Stiles laughed, most of the time.

James made a damn good wolf, as did Laura. Two of the soldiers died from the bite, and the last one was the Southern-boy who had recognized James. He couldn't find an anchor, come full moon. They chained him up, and James hugged him every day after that, tried to give him ideas, something to hold on to to control the wolf. The second full moon, as he raged against the chains, Kent put a bullet in his spine, right at the base of his neck, when the plain steel started to give. James cut him in half with his trusty old knife, freshly sharpened and doused in wolf's bane, as every other blade in the camp was by that point. Stiles watched the tears rolling down the Beta's face, and his heart ached for home, as he rarely allowed it to anymore. Neither James nor Kent were particularly like any of Stiles' old friends, not really, but in that moment, James, with his sun-thickened skin and blond hair and mountain man beard, reminded Stiles a lot of Scott and Derek. And his dad. His dad who had cried silent, heavy tears when they laid his wife in the ground. Scott whose heart was always three sizes too big. And Derek, trying so hard to rebuild his family from ashes and guilt of imagined crimes.

They spent the rest of the night in silence, the two new wolves leaning against each other in an instinctual gesture of pack solidarity. Stiles and Kent sat on the other side of the fire from them, Kent whittling with wood and knife, never comfortable with his hands still, and Stiles just...thinking.

In the morning, they held their own sort of funeral, buried the man with the other dead, and Stiles put a wolf's bane triskelion over the graves of the three wolves that could have been.

Four months with the camp, all spent with forced radio silence no matter how Kent or the other technically-inclined fiddled, the day of Laura and James' third full moon as wolves, Stiles voiced his concerns about their lack of an alpha. They stared at him, then Laura barked out a laugh and cuffed him. James just chuckled and shook his head.

"Stiles, you idiot," he said, fondly. "What better alpha could we get but you?"

"I ain't a wolf," Stiles protested, and scowled at the damn cowboy's wretched English bursting from his well-educated mouth.(It was just a joke that James was a "dumb cowboy;" he got his scholarship from sports, but the man earned his good grades. Each of the trio had their specialties, but none of them were stupid, not by a long shot. James just didn't see the point of pretty words, as he put it, when his coarse manner of speech clearly got the meaning through just fine.)

"So what? You ain't a shaman or witch or whatever either, but you and I both know you do things ain't no 'regular human' oughtta be able. You're always sayin, ain't no rules in war'n'love." James shrugged, like that was that, but dammit, Stiles wasn't satisfied. Kent took a seat beside him, jabbing violently at the fire with a stick. They always had important conversations around fires it seemed like. Stiles sometimes wondered what Derek would have thought about that, and then he viciously stomped out that train of thought. Or gently tamped it down, rather. Thinking of home, of friends, just hurt, and reminded him of all the things that had changed, of all the things he had lost, of all the things that might have changed without him even knowing. Reminded him of all the things he'd never have again.

"Did any of those books you always had your nose in say alphas absolutely had to be wolves?" Kent asked, dark eyes lit by the flickering flames. Stiles gnawed on the inside of his lip and didn't reply for a while. They left him to stew in his thoughts. Laura, new as she was, tried to talk to him at some point; James gently shushed her, distracted her with another story about their time in the jungle. It was actual honest truth for their new packmate, unlike the bullshit he'd enjoyed feeding the rest of the encampment ever since they became aware of werewolves and the possibility of other things that go bump in the night.

Eventually, when dawn was peaking over the trees, a solemnly beautiful sight, Stiles sighed. "I'm not an alpha," he stated, and held up a hand before they could argue. Oh how well he knew them. And they him, in return. "Alphas are red-eyed super-wolves who can give people the Bite. I am definitely not that. But we're a pack. If you want me to be your leader--I won't deny you that. Not much I'd deny you bastards. Call me alpha if you want. Just so long as you don't go rogue, I don't care. And if you do, I'll beat the shit out of you until you come to your damn senses. What little you may still have at least." Laura grinned, feral and wild(she reminded him of Erica, though coloring-wise she was more along the lines of Boyd. Actually, she looked like what he imagined Erica and Boyd's daughter would look like, if they ever had one, except her skin was darker even than Boyd's. She made it into a weapon with slightly terrifying cheer) and James chuffed one of his quiet, honest laughs. James laughed a lot, actually. He was their big, fluffy optimist. Kent grinned too, bumped their shoulders together, then got to his feet. He handed Laura a little wolf carved in excruciating detail, declared he was going to sleep in their tent(the trio couldn't really stand to sleep apart, and Laura claimed her instincts wanted her to stick with the pack, so they bunked together) and declared as he walked away "you barbarians can join me after you eat. Don't wanna wake up to you chewing on my damn arm again, James." That hadn't actually happened, but it was still best to keep wolves well-fed. And Stiles could stand for some food.

Six months into their stay with the camp, their rations were on the verge of utter depletion. Stiles, Kent, James and Laura each formed a team and took up hunting and foraging. Old hat for the three men, and easy instinct for Laura, once she got the hang of it. All plants had to be approved of by Stiles, individually, before anyone tried to eat them. Some of them had to be cooked, some of them had to be checked for particularly nasty bugs, some of them definitely shouldn't be cooked("They'll get poisonous from fire?" one of the men inquired, bewildered, and Stiles snorted. "A couple of them, maybe, but mostly they just taste disgusting cooked. Trust me.") and because this jungle was just hell wrapped in a colorful, wet package, some of them were just pretending to be edible because in order to grow, they needed to plant their seeds in a fucking corpse, and what better way to make that happen than to kill whoever ate them? What's that, you didn't eat the seed? Well fuck you, die anyway.

It was a lot of work, but Stiles turned out to be a pretty good teacher, and not just to newly Bitten werewolves, so the workload dropped to manageable fast.

There were still plenty of attacks, of course. Almost regularly--rarely more than a month went by between something, werewolf or otherwise, coming out of the jungle in search of blood, although fortunately they rarely cropped up within a week of each other either, with a few glaring exceptions. They even got attacked by a goddamn tiger at one point, and when they brought it down, Kent let out the first hysterical laugh he'd uttered in a long time, and declared that if any fucking were- or zombie-tigers came after them, he would quit, just run off into the damn jungle and be done with it.

Keeping over 150 men and women alive in the middle of a super- and naturally hostile jungle made time fly for the most part. Sometimes though, it practically held still. Even with the threat of attack constantly hanging over them, and Stiles displaying a clinical case of hyper-vigilance that left the medic cursing and half-begging him to _just get some sleep, dammit_ , the boredom was what was really going to be the death of all of them. There were games to be played, but the encampment was never supposed to be permanent. Apparently the radio silence had started around the time they were supposed to get their new orders, supposed to pack up and move someplace fucking hospitable, in theory. There was running water thanks to a well that had been there for fuck-knows-how-long and some frankly fairly ingenious finagling that had occurred when the camp was set up and it was all completely beyond Stiles' comprehension(Kent said it was clever, and Stiles just took his word for it), but the electricity was, well, minimal, and mostly centered around the (currently useless) radio station and (slightly less useless) kitchen. When they got tired of tents, they built a few buildings from felled trees, constructed a good old-fashioned wall around their camp since the chain-link fence was clearly not cutting it, dug out a trench in which Stiles convinced various poisonous plants to grow...Basically, they turned their encampment into something _more_ (defensible, comfortable, personal). James turned out to have a knack for carpentry _and_ metalsmithing(although smithery resources were understandably a bit limited), and he and Kent and some other crafty bastards all got a working fucking medieval portcullis and drawbridge set up. They erected guard towers, and the radio turned into just a side project in favor of making themselves a goddamn fortress. It would have felt very "ye olde," except they still had plenty of ammo and equipment for weapons' care, and shooting at things sort of took away from the medieval illusion. Just a bit.

All those changes, though, made defending the base not only manageable, but gave it an almost sporting feel. Quite a few of the soldiers even came to enjoy when attacks came, if for no better reason than simply having _something_ to do. Some enjoyed it quite a bit, in fact. Stiles never said anything to discourage their enthusiasm, figuring they had to get their jollies somewhere, but he and his little pack came to a very quiet agreement to keep a very close eye on those ones. They wrote down their names, thinking ahead, in an optimistic fashion. They would recommend them for psych evaluation, if they ever made it out of that godforsaken jungle. Maybe, hopefully, it would help, at least for a few. Prevent them from bringing too much of the war home with them. Although really, at this point, every one of them could probably use more than a bit of psycho analyzing.

A year into life at the encampment, which was now fondly referred to as the Fort(when they didn't just call it "home") a dozen soldiers went trekking into the woods, claiming they were going hunting. The pack noticed, of course, that all twelve soldiers had their names on that list. They made up the majority, in fact. When three of them returned fifteen days later, demanding they let down the bridge, Stiles shot two of them down before they even reached the lowering bridge. Someone grabbed his gun and he let them, watching with dark, knowing eyes as the portcullis was lifted. The third man threw himself with a wicked grin and wild eyes at a soldier who had ducked under the portcullis with eager greetings in mind. As sharp fangs were bared and features twisted, James caught the man with a hand around his throat and slammed him down onto the bridge. Laura pinned his legs, Kent put a bullet in his head, and James cut him in half. They cut the other two in half too, ignoring their feeble snarls, then trussed them up in ropes embedded with poisonous plants and buried them together, six feet under, well outside the Fort's walls.

"They weren't wolves," Laura whispered in the relative privacy of their reinforced tent; all of the other tents were no more, since they'd built a proper barracks. But the pack liked their tent, and even if they were allies, most of the humans didn't want to bed down next to "monsters." So Kent, Laura and James(Stiles wasn't allowed to touch anything related to building; he always managed to hurt himself, and usually fucked up whatever he was trying to do, frequently undoing the work of others in the process) quietly used scraps of metal and wood, pieces that hadn't or wouldn't go into the more important buildings, to make their relatively temporary home more stable. They didn't prioritize it, all but Laura already used to sleeping in trees or mud and thus having pretty low standards for living, and Laura apparently used to go "real camping" with her family, so she didn't mind roughing it. Eventually though, their tent was more like a small building, with some tarp filched from now-unused tents to make it all the more structurally sound and maybe a little more private. The exterior looked like some sort of mutant circus-folk contraption with absolutely no color to it. The interior wasn't private at all, but their cots eventually just turned into futons and bedrolls and dried plants spread over the "floor," so clearly, privacy wasn't much of an issue for the four of them. Even Kent acted more like a wolf than not, even before there were actual wolves in their pack, changed irreversibly by the jungle. He didn't generally join in their puppy piles, and had been known to elbow James in the solar plexus when the big man got a bit too...cuddly, but he was always within reach at night, and no one mentioned it if he let them snuggle up to him when they woke up from nightmares. Stiles usually left the tent when he had a nightmare, went to sit in a guard tower and stare at the forest through night vision goggles. Sometimes one or more of the pack followed him, or came to fetch him, shortly or after a while. But usually they just left him to his thoughts, let him be until he felt ready to join them again. Their alpha was a damaged man and even the "outsiders" knew it.

James nodded in agreement to Laura's words. "They definitely weren't wolves," he reiterated, vehement. He sounded haunted. Stiles gripped the back of each of his wolves' necks, squeezing and rubbing comfortingly until they began to relax under their alpha's touch.

"Were they fucking weretigers?" Kent hissed, and his scandalized, so-fucking-done-with-this tone startled a laugh out of all of them. Stiles grinned at his human packmate, who maintained his wide-eyed, pissed look, knowing perfectly well that Kent had done it on purpose, no matter how good the man's acting was.

Grinning still, Stiles shook his head. "No, Kent, they weren't 'fucking weretigers,'" he assured them confidently. "I'm pretty sure they were vampires." The three stared at him and he shrugged one shoulder, flapping his hand around as his head moved in a thinking sort of motion. Even after all this time he still talked with his whole body. His eyes and hands wandered a moment before settling on his pack again as he amended, "Well, a type of vampire. I majored in botany, but I minored in mythology. Because, well, _obviously._ You spend high school with werewolves, you develop some pretty specific interests. Anyway, there's so many pseudo-vampire legends from literally every corner of the world that even I don't know them all. But, you guys remember the wendigo, right?" All three heads nodded; of course they did, it wasn't exactly something Kent and James could ever forget, any more than Stiles could, and Laura had heard the whole story more than once, knew how important it was to her packmates and found it important to her in turn.

"I think maybe those guys were like...wendigo-juniors. I mean, think about it. All vampire stories come down to one thing--drinking human blood. Specifically, a human, or former human, at least, drinking human blood. To expand upon that, it's just one human essentially eating other humans. In modern society we like to call that cannibalism, and even without supernatural interference it tends to make a person pretty fucked up. I don't know if there's a full-blown wendigo out there that gave them some wendigo version of the Bite, or if those three just decided to eat their friends and this fucked up jungle decided to make their outsides match their insides. We've all seen stranger at this point. And y'know what? Those three? They were fucked up right from the start. Rotten to the core. They were the ones that went on hunts and brought back too-young game and does in breeding season, would kill things slower rather than quicker. That's why we made the list, remember? Don't feel bad for their deaths. Not for the others that went with them either. They're probably dead too, and not a one of them were good people worth mourning over. They barely deserved to get buried." Stiles took a bite of fruit then, the sweet, surprisingly soft juice a relief to his rough throat. He hadn't talked that much in a while, outside of telling stories, which were usually told in tandem with his packmates or the other members of the Fort nowadays. Time was he could all but read off an essay without so much as a dry throat. His father would barely even recognize him now, all jungle-worn and -torn. He was battle-scarred, beaten, bruised, and a darker tan than he'd ever thought to accomplish before, his once baby-soft skin turned rough and dry. The sun had brought out more of his freckles too, which was odd since Stiles could have sworn he barely saw the sun in the months spent in the woods, and rarely saw it even in camp. Nonetheless, every last soldier at the Fort was looking exceptionally tan.

The pack fell into a grim silence, collectively considering the implications in Stiles' speech.

They found out three day later that there was a wendigo in the woods after all. It was even worse than the one they'd killed so fucking long ago, a hulking yet skinny beast, skin the color of uncooked dough hanging loosely on somehow jagged bone. Just a monster made out flaps of skin and bone with no muscle, no meat. Topped off by mad eyes that didn't see no matter how they rolled, ears long and pointed, and a misshapen face that might have resembled a human's at one point, it was a nightmare walking, _lumbering_ out of the woods, even its gait somehow wrong, like a diseased ape. Its mane of brown hair was long and ratty, its horrid face interrupted by patches of what might have been a beard on a truly human face. So, Stiles felt no satisfaction in concluding with relative certainty, wendigos were humans after all, at least once-upon-a-time. He still didn't know if this wendigo had made the three mad men into whatever qualified as its version of Betas, but he felt pretty comfortable assuming it had had at least some influence in that. At least it felt slightly less fucking insane than _the jungle decided cannibals should just go ahead and turn into this_. Although, far as he knew, there wasn't exactly an origin story for wendigos, other than "human eats human, becomes monster" which certainly didn't happen in the history or science books(well, they didn't become monsters externally; the jury was still out on internally, taken on a case-by-case basis). Maybe the jungle had felt like making sentient decisions about monsters at some point. Stiles didn't know. And frankly, he really didn't want to. Sentient jungles were just a little too much, even for him.

Bottom line was, they killed the thing, cut it into as many pieces at they could, even cut its head into thirds( _the damn thing kept trying to fucking bite_ ). A handful of soldiers died in the process, but they got it down. Then they dug a huge, deep hole and dumped the pieces in. They dug up the three "madmen" to throw in, then reluctantly added the soldiers who had died bringing the beast down. Preserving their asses was more important than honoring the dead. They threw kindle in after them, and someone managed to find a bunch of surgical masks and bandanas for everyone to cover up with. Even wearing their masks, Stiles made everyone stay not only inside the fort, but inside the well-fortified barracks, with all the other buildings closed up tight as they could get and instructions to keep the masks on since their buildings weren't exactly air-tight. Even his packmates were sent off with the other soldiers, despite their vehement protests against leaving Stiles alone, especially outside the Fort's walls.

And so, alone, Stiles tied a red bandana overtop a baby blue surgical mask and burned the bodies. It took only enough time for the fire to take before he was glad he had followed his instincts and sent everyone away. As the bodies burned below him, his eyes watered and his skin felt like a mist of acid curled over it rather than smoke, the burning working in even under his clothing when his bare skin apparently wasn't enough to satisfy it. Eyes on the flames and heart in his throat, he pulled out the bag of white flowers he had been slowly, secretly collecting ever since that first wendigo. Latching on to a faith in himself, in his _gut_ , that he had so often ignored in the past, he threw the flowers one-by-one into the fire. The flames turned blue, then violet, and then an eerie, yet comforting white, growing brighter with each flower he dropped.

There was no specific flower type in the bag, just...white, all carefully plucked during that long trek and dropped into a bag without a word to his friends. Some had flecks of color, some brilliant centers or sticky nectar, but all were white and soft and _good_. There was even a breed of white-petaled monk's hood, one he didn't have a name for, or any other information for that matter. He had rubbed it against Laura though, when the woman was growling at one of the soldiers with wolf-influenced anger, and instead of flinching as she would from any other wolf's bane he had encountered, he watched her take a deep, soothing breath, and relax. Her skin, which by all rights should have developed a rash from even that brief contact, showed no signs of change. After that, he had started carefully growing the plant behind their tent, cherishing every new bloom or sprout like a gift from the heavens. He didn't know its full effects yet, didn't dare attempt to experiment and catalog them, would never risk his pack(even brushing a bloom against Laura had had his stomach in knots, and he still felt guilty knowing he had chosen the newer member of their pack on purpose, knowing he still valued his men over her, even if only slightly). But the same instinct that had him send everyone away had him cherishing those delicate white blossoms and the silky, oddly mint-scented leaves of the plant that bore them. Not gum-style spear- or peppermint either, but something like the strange bitter-sweet spike that came from crushing the leaves of a live mint plant. Had their leaves not been so clearly different, and if not for the very distinct blooms of course, Stiles would probably have actually assumed them to be mint. In fact, without the blooms, he would still have assumed them to be an undiscovered variety. He was almost sad he daren't trust any member of the aconite family, for he was sure no few of the soldiers would have enjoyed a bit of mint in their otherwise spice-less diet. They didn't even have salt, for fuck's sake. Damned temporary encampment.

For the record, the effects of Stiles being so near while burning the wendigos had been not only temporary but remarkably short-lived. In fact, they had started to fade as soon as the flames turned white, and though he sat there watching the unnatural-yet- _right_ white fire die for three hours, they only continued to fade until they were nothing more than a memory. He had covered the remains, clean white bone and ash(they couldn't get a fire hot enough to burn through bone, not with their still-limited resources, but he wasn't too worried) with a few inches of soil, then waited a while more, although he had already felt it was safe for the others to come out for hours before. Eventually he had to take a chance and trust his instincts, something he seemed to be doing more and more of as time moved on, and he let the soldiers and pack out. None of them mentioned anything more unpleasant than being sore after finishing the job of filling the hole, which was a solid twelve feet _just in case_ so Stiles figured, once again, his instincts were right.

With that in mind, he began filling his bag of white flowers again, grateful to a bountiful springtime of wide variety for making it an easier task than previously. The flowers he picked never rotted or withered, and they took an unusually long time to dry, which wasn't at all how they should have been acting while stuffed into a canvas bag with a bunch of their kin, but Stiles didn't really expect anything to make sense anymore. Not all of the flowers were white by the time his bag was full; he was learning to trust his instincts more, and while most of the flowers were still white, there was a good amount of colorful ones too. Once that bag was full, he found he wasn't satisfied and started filling another. Since their rations were emptied, they didn't have any sort of bag shortage, so he didn't hesitate in filling up a third bag with flowers that _"felt right_ ," eventually paying the colors no heed.

Then, while everything was still in bloom, he dug up saplings and sprouts and nabbed seeds, planting them first around the outer edge of the wall, on the tiny ledge between the wall and the waterless mote. Their mote had actually turned out to be even more effective than a traditional one; Stiles had watched a werewolf try to wade through the oddly swift-growing plants, and had been right there with everyone else who saw in staring, utterly shocked as the plants burned through every part of the werewolf not covered by its tattered clothing. The wolf didn't start burning until he was halfway through the mote and waist-deep in flowers though, even though Stiles _knew_ there was wolf's bane all along the edge. The werewolf had suddenly collapsed, screaming as the plants dragged him down without moving any more than plants always did, and he disappeared completely with a single breeze that brushed the plants over him, righting them into their former positions. It should have been impossible. It made no sense. And Stiles, well, for once he wasn't so sure he'd seen stranger. At least he had a new standard to hold things to.

But as he braced halfway into the mote to plant what he thought of as his "happy-plants," careful not to touch the fucking terrifying _murder-plants,_ he found himself completely at ease. He had the feeling that he could walk straight through the mote completely unscathed, even though he knew that the mixture of plants that made up their mote was so potent that even a plain old human could _run_ through it and still require immediate medical attention. He didn't test his "theory," but he didn't really doubt it either. And when he was done planting his happy-flowers, since he still had some left over, he planted them inside the walls too, put little rings of stone around them so no one would pull them up.

A mushroom ring appeared over night in the middle of the Fort, around a ring of tiny stones, inside of which was the only tree sapling Stiles had planted within the Fort's walls. Everyone stared, and then the rule was made that, under no circumstances was anyone to step inside that ring. Just in case. The sapling took three months to grow a meter, which should have taken more along the lines of three years, and that turned into another one of the many things the Fort collectively just didn't talk about it. Possibly along the line of thinking that said talking about something made it real, or possibly just because if they talked about all the crazy shit they saw, they'd definitely go completely mad, or at the very least get in the habit of talking about it casually and wind up in an asylum once they got back to civilization. Although at this point, no one was entirely sure they _shouldn't_ all be in some sort of facility or another. Or, for that matter, supposing there was still civilization to get back to(it was all starting to feel a bit apocalyptic at that point), if they would ever get there at all.

Almost a year and a half at the Fort had Stiles contemplating packing up and trying to move the whole damn camp through the forest. According to the maps they had, they were about five hundred miles beyond enemy line, and about three hundred away from any friendly settlements big enough to get a mark on the map. But damn near anything would be better than just sitting there, watching Kent struggle with the damn radio.

Except it wouldn't be better, not really, it just wouldn't be so boring. They'd lost a lot of soldiers over the months, but that still left them with 116 men and women, 120 including the pack(Stiles never really included the pack, always kept them separate from the rest of the soldiers in his mind. The soldiers were their allies and comrades, men and women Stiles knew by name and face, many of which had shared stories of home over supper and fires, but Stiles wouldn't hesitate to throw the whole lot of them into a dragon's den to save his pack. Sometimes he felt guilty about that. Sometimes Stiles felt guilty about a lot of things. Most of the time though, he was too damn tired for guilt.) Moving so much as fifty, or even _twenty_ people through the overgrown jungle between them and the nearest base would be hell, no matter how well-trained they were. It wouldn't be impossible, not necessarily, but they would definitely lose people along the way. And there was no guarantee that the maps were anywhere near accurate anymore; they hadn't been updated since the radios went down, and during a war things could change fast. The enemy line might have even encroached further into the "friendly" zone, by inches or miles. There were no guarantees, not with so little information. But sitting, waiting for the next monster, or a bomb, or even the enemy(they hadn't actually seen any sign of their human enemy at the Fort; everyone had more-or-less come to an agreement that this was because natives probably knew better than to try and get through this particular part of the hell-jungle) was going to drive them all mad.

A month later and he was starting to talk to the pack about it. Kent suggested sending a scouting team, trying to get word to an allied base. But the best scouting team would be the pack, and the pack...well, the Fort was the pack's territory. The trio didn't want to go back into the jungle and they didn't want to risk their new packmate out there. Laura took offense to that, growled at them for it, but ultimately she didn't want to leave either. Not only had the Fort become their home, but they were its best line of defense. They had taught the soldiers a lot in the past year(nearing two, dear gods) but still, when something came out of the woods that the snipers couldn't take down, it was the pack that ducked under the portcullis and clambered across the bridge to meet it head-on. There were always other soldiers right at their back, but they weren't werewolves, they couldn't tear a wendigo in half or use their teeth as weapons. And if something new came out, none of them had Stiles' knowledge. The soldiers were highly capable men and women, ridiculously capable, strong and clever and mostly good(the dozen that died had cut out almost half their list, and they'd put stars by quite a few names of people that had changed after seeing the monsters those men became, or crossed the names off names altogether, either due to such drastic changes or because they had died). They would probably survive a few weeks, months even, on their own without a problem. Probably. But who knew how long it would take the pack to reach the base, let alone convince them to send out a rescue for a hundred-some at the Fort, which barely had the landing space for two helicopters with very competent pilots outside of their walls. Not to mention there was no telling what the possibly-sentient jungle would throw at them in the next five minutes, let alone months.

Three weeks after that, they found out one of the women was pregnant, apparently conceived on a rush of adrenaline that erased things like condoms from their mind. (Their condom supply was running low too. Stiles only found that a little hilarious, with a touch of sweet, and a dash of resignation. Couples formed under duress were not generally of the lasting and/or healthy variety, historically speaking.) James of all people was the one who yelled at them, right after sniffing it out. Kent scolded them and then, for good measure, Laura did too. Stiles sighed and laid a hand on the woman, Paula's, belly. Everyone went still at the motion, which was the first time Stiles realized how much the whole Fort had come to pay him heed. He wasn't their commander, hadn't stolen that position, but he wasn't just another soldier either. He was feared, sure, but respected as well. The previously raucous soldiers watched in silence as he knelt down and pet Paula's still flat stomach through her shirt.

"Hello there," he said, soft and almost reverent. Tired too, but there was a smile he just couldn't keep off his lips. "No one will ever have a more interesting conception story than you, and even if they're kind of idiots, you'll have parents to be proud of." He gave her belly one last pat, then straightened up and smiled at the frightened couple. They had looked scared, guilty, pained, _lost_ as they were scolded. As well they should have. But now they looked at him with the stirrings of hope, and he thought they should look like that even more. "We're not going to raise a baby here. We're going to get out of this jungle, and you two are going to have a baby, and then you're going to be the best damn parents you can. Don't let this-this adrenaline-junky environment convince you though. Don't make this baby live in a house with parents who don't love each other. A year in civilization, you may find you don't love each other. Or you may find you're really not cut out to be parents, one or both of you. It happens. But someone--someone here, someone you know, _someone_ will help you. All of us will help you. You're carrying the baby of the Fort, Paula. The mark of all our efforts, the evidence of all that we've survived, and all that we've lost. Remember that." He kissed her forehead, because maybe the Fort was a little more his pack than he'd realized, then stepped back. He looked at his pack, and they didn't nod; the didn't need to. They understood. He retreated to their tent to plan, and smiled a little more to himself as he heard the previously half-panicked, scornful soldiers start back up full of joy and welcome, heard people offering numbers and tips and help in all sorts of forms. Joking name suggestions were thrown about with increasing levels of ludicrousness("We cannot name a baby 'Fort', dumbass," he heard Laura say, loudly, at one point), and that night they had a feast. A party, more like. Stiles sat and plotted, away from the festivities, and silently acknowledged that they should have had a party for something far sooner. They hadn't done anything like one since James' 21st birthday. There'd been little celebrations, here and there, for various birthdays and events, including Kent's 27th and Stiles' 24th and Laura's 20th, and on Christmas there was a sickening amount of carols sung when someone figured out the date halfway through the day, but this...this should have happened sooner. Stiles had been letting others get infected with his hyper-vigilance. He learned a lesson that day, and he thought everyone else at the Fort did as well, although what lesson or lessons each person learned he couldn't say for sure. That baby brought them knowledge though, along with hope. Babies did that. It was weird. And sort of amazing.

Another two weeks later, roughly, Stiles was ready to put his plan into action. He, Laura, and three of their best soldiers would set out for the nearest base and try their damnedest to get help for the Fort. James and Kent would stay behind to help the Fort. Kent was clever, and James was their best fighter. Stiles would leave behind the numerous journals he had filled over the past nearly two years with knowledge of plants and monsters and anything else he could, including pictures(one of the men had an old Polaroid camera and an absolutely absurd amount of film for it, all of which he was more than happy to share with Stiles, even helping him learn to use it properly; he died during one of the earlier attacks, and now the camera was another of Stiles' cherished possessions) and drawings(Stiles' artistic abilities had drastically improved since high school) and a few dried clippings(there were trees with nearly identical fruit but different leaves, and only one of the fruit was edible; Stiles could tell the differences between the fruit, but it was easiest to just make sure everyone knew what the "bad" leaves looked like, and have them bring back leaves if they weren't sure). Kent would make good use of those.

For his part, James had assured Stiles with great confidence and patience that he would be just fine without his alpha there. He said he was actually fairly confident he would be fine, at least as far as wolfly urges went, without any pack there at all. Stiles felt better knowing Kent would be with him anyway. He didn't like splitting his pack up, not at all, to the point that he suspected he was a lot more their alpha than he had realized, but felt it was better to have them in two halves than one left behind to lone-wolf it. In the end, his main concern was whether or not the base they had set as their goal would actually be there. The Fort was as safe as it could be, but everything outside of it had too many _if_ 's for Stiles to be comfortable with. Kent told him to take the maps along with several compasses(or rather, multitools with compasses on them; ah the perks of modern society); instead, Stiles and some artistically-inclined soldiers copied the maps in somewhat excruciating detail. They would definitely be taking the compass-multitools though, the blades of which Stiles had already applied potent poultices to. He had gone a step further by marking a little spot on his compass so he _couldn't_ forget exactly the direction he should be headed in order to reach the base. Just in case. Two of the men who would be coming with them(or rather, _the_ two men; the third non-pack soldier was another woman) marked the same spot on their own compasses when they saw Stiles', and Stiles figured they'd picked pretty well.

They would set out in the morning, as he told the pack and the three soldiers he had no doubt he would begin to consider pack by the time they reached base. He was pretty sure that, had he been an actual alpha werewolf, he would have expanded his pack considerably already. He was still not certain whether or not he regretted his prolonged (relative) humanity. Since there was a chance his Bite would have killed some of his would-be packmates, he was mostly glad, but he did regret somewhat that their pack remained only the two-wolves strong. Some instinctive part of him wanted more Betas, silently demanded he expand their tiny pack. He blamed the jungle and tried not to think about it, unless he started thinking of even worse things, in which case wondering just what the fuck was going on with this _alpha_ business was a perfect escape. Like when he wondered if his dad was well, or if any of his old friends had signed up, or if the war had gotten bad enough to necessitate a draft(doubtful, but paranoia made him wonder about more doubtful things than that), or how many of his old friends were even alive still. Wondering _am I even human anymore?_ was preferable to that.

Anyway, the tree was nearing five feet by the time Stiles had his plan and was setting it in motion. The plants on the outside of the wall weren't growing nearly as fast, although they were still growing faster than anticipated, which was actually pretty much anticipated at that point. Their Fort was undoubtedly the safest place in the whole jungle, and Stiles found himself thinking of what a waste it would be to simply leave it. He jotted down in his notebook that, once everyone was gone, the bridge should be left down and the portcullis open. Hopefully it would be useful to someone someday. It occurred to him that maybe he should be worried about some of the monsters they had built the Fort to protect against would take over, but as the white flowers spread inexplicably across the other side of the mote, while the mote's flowers never exceeded their bounds, only grew steadily taller, somehow Stiles just didn't think that would be a problem. And if it was? Well, maybe being in this place that had begun as a doomed army base and turned into a haven would change them into something new. If the jungle could be a sentient creator of monsters(and, Stiles had been forced to believe by his own subconscious, things that weren't monsters at all, although no one could say for sure they'd seen anything but regular animals, just flashes of things that looked like _more_ and couldn't really be put into words), why couldn't the Fort be a sentient creator of _something_ as well?

Stiles went in search of Kent early in the morning, having woken to find him missing from their tent. Not necessarily a surprise; Kent had been restless lately. All four of them had. Hell, all 120 of them had. Everyone was anxious, waiting on the proverbial and sometimes literal edge of their seats for the change they could see on the horizon. They would be leaving only an hour after dawn though, and Stiles wanted to spend what would probably be his last few hours at the Fort surrounded by his whole pack. So he left the two wolves twined together in the middle of the tent, extracting himself from their pile with practiced ease. Their only reaction was to snuggle closer, and grumble huffily when opening the former-tent's weird door-flap-lovechild-contraption let in a slight chill. They were light sleepers, but Stiles' quiet, "Shh, it's alright," easily reassured them and sent them right back to sleep. Wolf and human sides alike trusted their alpha unerringly. Stiles would always be at least a little awed that he had somehow earned that trust.

Kent was a prowler by nature, a restless person over all; if he wasn't fiddling, he was walking around the Fort, examining things or just pacing, chatting occasionally if there were people about. Sometimes he went up one of the towers to watch the woods, but since he always wound up getting distracted by his whittling, he was never actually on any of the sentry watch-rotations. He'd just go up and stare into the woods a while, then sit down or lean against some part of the structure and start with the whittling. All of the regular sentries got used to it pretty quick. The soldiers were, as a whole, surprisingly good at just accepting whatever came along, particularly when it came to the oddities of the pack or their other comrades.

But even knowing Kent could be anywhere within the Fort(he wasn't stupid enough to leave their walls, no matter how bored) Stiles turned immediately towards the only building that had been there before they got tired of tents and useless chain-link and built their own defenses. They'd reinforced the building too of course, but it wasn't nearly the cohesive wood structure their barracks was. It was a mash-up instead, of the military-standard that had been erected when the encampment was made, and whatever changes their builders had seen fit to make. It was sort of hideous, but it grew on Stiles to the point that it was ugly-in-a-charming-way. Quirky, Melissa would call it. It had a big ugly metal tower and dish on top of it, with all sorts of wiring leading down to the radio center that took up about a third of the building. The rest was the kitchen and about a dozen indoor showers, for women or shy men. There were outdoor showers too, for not-shy men and women. The longer they spent at the Fort, the more people just went ahead and used the outdoor showers, with ever decreasing amounts of clothing. They were less military unit and more exceptionally large family, and Paula's baby had only made it worse. Better? Whatever.

_He could be literally anywhere,_ Stiles reminded himself stubbornly, then sighed and obeyed his alpha instincts(which were not the same as the instincts that had him collecting white flowers; yet another thing he didn't understand, hooray) that pointed right to the radio tower. Technically it made sense, sure. Kent had certainly been tinkering with the radio more over the past few days. But he would have felt more comfortable thinking that through than just having some uncontrollable part of him point aggressively and tell him _this is where he is._ Like having a personal built in compass that was finicky about when and how it worked. Stiles was starting to feel bad for birds and other animals conscious of things like the poles. Hell, he kind of sympathized with magnets.

He slipped in through the entrance into the kitchens, taking a sharp left towards the radio. He tapped once on the door, waited a beat, tapped three times, waited another beat, then tapped twice. No reply came, although he heard someone rummaging about inside, whispering and possibly cursing to themselves. It sounded like Kent. Stiles opened the door, trying to be neither hesitant nor overly rushed, and froze instantly to gape at a--a _something._ White and violet and colorful-but-not and some strange mix of equine and feline, it lay partially underneath the radio panel, curling half-way around Kent. The man didn't seem aware of whatever it was, even as it shifted, lifting its head to stare with intelligent blue-violet eyes at Stiles. He could see through it, he noticed, torn between numbness and panic. Not completely or particularly easily, but it was definitely not entirely solid. It blinked, one slow, thoughtful sweep of pale lids, then the head turned away to watch Kent, who seemed oblivious to all but the technology under his fingertips. Something like electricity buzzed in Stiles' fingertips and his heart hammered. There was--there was something happened. Something huge. Something magical. Something, some _one_ was interfering with one of his packmates, and part of him screamed to make it stop, to break it apart and never let it anywhere near _his_ pack. But instead he was frozen in spot, a song that felt like flowers(Stiles didn't know either, he tried not to question these sorts of things, for the sake of his sanity) crooning in some unrecognizable voice at the back of his head. The song wrapped around him, bound his mind, stilled the raging beast. It fluttered through his throbbing heart, and though his chest still ached and the electricity still stung, he couldn't say he was afraid, or angry. He wasn't happy or sad or numb either. He just was. It was stranger than the plants eating the werewolf. He could practically see the old-school "1 UP" sign flash through his mind as one strangeness officially trumped the other.

Kent let out a squawk that was a bit of "Eureka!" and a little "Holy fuck!" and mostly just an inarticulate screech of joy as suddenly the radio crackled, the first time it had done _anything_ the entire time the pack had been there. The...whatever it was, looked pleased, despite not really having much in the way of facial features generally associated with that sort of look. A bit like a smug feline, he supposed, and wondered what a smug horse looked like. This thing was completely fucking up his head. Fortunately(ish) it looked at him again, tail silently swishing in what seemed like another display of pleasure. It slid from underneath the panel and rose gracefully to its hoof-paws(he couldn't really distinguish them all that well and mostly assumed they continued the theme of combining equine and feline and _other_ like the rest of the creature) in one fluid movement. It shook out its...mane? It seemed like a mane, of the horse sort not the lion sort. Either way, it shook it out, then shivered all over, and took a step towards Stiles, finally separating from Kent. With that step it began to fade, and as it trotted towards Stiles, still-frozen in the doorway, it faded further and further. It was just shy of invisible when it brushed _through_ him, like a cool breeze that went straight through his clothes and down to his bones and organs. He heard, distantly, what might have been very strangely-shaped hooves clicking on the building's tile, but they faded quickly away, and then, finally, he could move. And breathe. Which was great, because apparently he hadn't been doing that for, well, he wasn't sure how long but long enough that his lungs practically cried with relief when he finally took a breath.

"Kent?" he tried, voice coming out as a croak. His packmate was still fussing with the radio, but in an excited, successful way. He looked like he was closing up the panel rather than fighting with wires, as he had been every other time Stiles found him in here. Kent jolted, banging his head on the panel, whined, then whipped about to stare at Stiles with huge, eager eyes. It was the most excited he'd ever seen Kent. It was sort of entirely fucking disturbing. Kent was just not an excitable fellow.

"Stiles!" Kent exclaimed, and scrambled to his feet. "I didn't hear you come in," he said but didn't give Stiles a chance to respond, too busy all but dragging and shoving Stiles towards the panel despite Stiles' perfect willingness to go wherever Kent directed him. "I got it. I did it. It's working. I think. It should be. It fucking better be. I haven't tested it, I just got it to respond, but it should work. If there's anyone within range it'll work, we just have to mess with the frequencies. Look, I wrote you up a sheet of lingo and codes. Hopefully they still apply. I'm going to try the frequency for a friendly base that's been around for like fifty years first. It's got a huge tower so it should be able to pick us up, even way out here, since we amped up this thing pretty good. Come on, come on, try it out." Despite Kent's frankly un-Kent-like urgings, the man was still fiddling, twisting knobs and drumming buttons and tapping and turning and, well, fussing. Stiles did not understand radios, would never pretend to, so he just stood back and waited for further instruction, examining the sheet Kent had written up in his fucking doctor chicken-scratch because he just had to be a cliche, even if he was probably not going to be a doctor anymore. Probably a chemist or something that worked with...technical stuff. Something modern and shiny. Although Kent would probably make a pretty good doctor. Maybe. Assuming his PTSD didn't wind up being triggered by life in a hospital. Because Kent definitely had PTSD. All of them did, especially the pack. Stiles thought Kent would do just fine in a hospital, even in the ER or ICU or other high-stress places. But Kent probably wouldn't trust himself there, which Stiles could understand. Stiles wouldn't trust himself in a lot of places.

Finally Kent pressed what Stiles figured was the microphone into his hand and instructed, "Hold down the button when you're talking."

Stiles stared at the sheet a moment longer, then cleared his throat, pressed down the button, and said as clearly as he could, "Station Delta-Eight-Omega-Five, this is Base Uniform-Charlie-Bravo One-One-Six-Seven-Nine, reporting in after extended radio silence. Do you copy? Over." He released the button before he closed his eyes and breathed a desperate, heartfelt, " _Please._ "

And...silence. Silence that lasted so long the world ended and his heart stopped and everyone broke apart and wept. And then the radio crackled, and an incredulous voice responded, "This is Station Delta-Eight-Omega-Five, we copy you, UCB. What is your current position? Over."

Stiles' knees wobbled; Kent's gave out. He caught his packmate's arm, helping lower him to the ground. Then he decided it seemed pretty nice down there, now that he was looking at it, and slid down to lean against Kent, head on his packmate's shoulder as Kent hid his face in his hands and trembled with silent sobs. Stiles had to clear his throat once or twice before he could respond.

"We're at our original assigned location, sir," he said, voice so rough he could barely recognize it as his own. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and he sent out another one of his silent thank yous to whoever might be listening. Maybe the sentient jungle had decided it liked them. Or, more likely, maybe it had decided it was finally tired of playing with them. "We never received relocation orders. Our radios have been down for almost two years now, sir. Would you--should I report?...Over." Stiles' heart was going crazy again. He was caught in a swirl of numbness for the moment though, save for the tears rolling down his cheeks and the tightness of his throat.

"Oh my God, hold on," the man gasped, which Stiles was pretty sure wasn't standard procedure. There was silence after that, although Stiles caught an edge of excited-sounding chatter before the radio's button was presumably released.

They waited, the room full of their breathing and Stiles' too-loud heart and the roar of blood surely in both their ears. Stiles might have been on the edge of a panic attack. He wasn't too sure. Couldn't say he was sure of much right then, truth be told.

"Son, this is General Lloyd O'Neal," a gruff voice interrupted before Stiles could actually start to panic. Stiles wasn't sure if it had been a minute or an hour since the first man left. The general sounded tired though, like he'd just been woken. Stiles wondered if it was coincidence or if someone had woken him up to take their...call? Was it a call over the radio? Fuck, Stiles had no idea. Why the hell was he the one talking into this thing anyway? "Is this Commander Hummel?"

"No, sir," Stiles answered after a quick swallow, trying to sound professional while feeling a bit like a half-drowned kitten. "There was never any Commander Hummel here, sir, to my knowledge. This isn't Commander John Wilkes either though, sir. My name is Stilinski. My original squad was the East Victor-Alpha-Oscar-Kilo-Yankee-Romeo-Echo." VAOKYRE. They had taken to pronouncing it Valkyrie, mostly because Stiles was stubborn and thought it sounded cooler than 'vow-kyre'. Right up until a wendigo killed all but four of them. And then a goddamn snake knocked them down to three. Stiles would always think that was bullshit, that Eddy got taken down by a snake instead of one of the actual fucking mythical creatures the forest was fucking teaming with. And then a spider nearly got Kent. But, well, Stiles was stubborn. Through and through. "We've been with the Fort--sorry sir, that's what we've taken to calling our base. We've been here for, well, almost two years now sir. Maybe closer to a year and a half. It's hard to keep track of time out here..." He released the button before remembering he was supposed to say over, wasn't he? He scowled at the radio for being so difficult.

" _Team Valkyrie?_ " the general asked, and Stiles just--he laughed. He couldn't help it. Kent shook with choked off sob-laughs beside him, and he finally realized that not a single one of them had said the name since they lost their teammates. Not even when they recounted the story to the Fort. He didn't think they'd even told Laura their old squad name.

"Yes, sir," Stiles confirmed, both a smile and tears in his voice. "There's--we're only three strong sir. The rest of the team...We're all that's left."

"Yes, we found the bodies," the general said sadly, and Stiles decided he liked the man. When he said suspiciously, "There were four bodies missing," Stiles only liked him more.

"Eduardo Stevens was with us when we took off after what got our team. The jungle got him, sir." Sounded a lot better than 'a snake got him,' that was for sure. "We killed the thing. Can't really say what it was, sir. But the four of us, we killed it. Eddy--Eduardo, sir. He was a good soldier. I've got his tags. Wasn't sure anyone would find him, out in the middle of the jungle. We got a bit turned around, sir."

"Team Valkyrie's been missing for three years, son," the general informed him sternly, sounding amused and sad at the same time. "Who else is with you, Stilinski?"

"I've got Kent Nadar and James Conrey with me from Team Valkyrie, sir, as well as the 117 remaining men and women from this base. We've had a hard time of it." Stiles had to remind himself that Laura wasn't technically part of his team. He'd fight tooth and nail to make sure that changed though. There had to be someone in the military who knew about the supernatural; no way they stayed ignorant, not with all this fucking insanity in this goddamn jungle. Plus, he was sort of the mind that the government knew about these thing anyway, had known for years, and just didn't share them. It didn't sound much like a conspiracy theory when you were actually actively aware and possibly a part of the supernatural world. He wasn't sure the general would be 'in the know' though, so he didn't mention the wendigo. Safer that way. And technically the truth. _Technically_ he didn't _know_ it was a wendigo, he had just made a very well-educated guess that that was the name that fit it best, when set against all the other mythological creatures it could have been. It could have been a chupacabra, or a vampire, or any other number of things. Technically it qualified as them in at least one or two legends. But Stiles was sticking with wendigo, since it practically matched the popular description word-for-word.

"It's a damn hell out there, son. We've lost a lot of good teams over the past few years. Mind telling me how you've done so well, so long?" Ah yes, he was a suspicious man. That made sense. Stiles would have been even more suspicious, probably. He kind of wished he'd been more easy going, but he also recognized that he wouldn't have trusted a trusting man.

"I wouldn't mind at all, sir, but I've got a pregnant woman here, and we're a bit tired of the jungle trying to kill us all-hours, so would you mind if we wait for the explanation until we're in person? I've got a list of codes here if you need some sort of proof, but we're probably a good two years out of date so I don't know how much good it would do. We could really use a lift though, sir, as soon as you can get us one. We haven't got much room here though. We've...fortified." Stiles paused to glare at Kent, who had snorted and was now more laughing than crying. "So we cut down some trees, but took up a lot of room with the fortifications. According to the estimations of everyone here, there's only about enough room for two helicopters, but honestly we'd take a flying bicycle right about now. Sir."

There were a few beats of silence, and Stiles was pretty sure he heard a chuckle in General Lloyd's voice when he spoke up again. "You said you were at Base UCB 11679's original location then, son?"

"Yes, sir, and, with all due respect--we'd prefer to call it the Fort. It's been our home a long while now, sir, and we figure it's more than earned a name more personal than a string of letters and numbers." Now Kent was giving him a look, one of those ones Stiles still couldn't read, despite how well he knew the man. Despite the fact they were pack, for fuck's sake. It was irritating and Stiles hoped his expression very clearly said as much. Kent's face just looked mysterious and amused for his efforts. Stiles' pack was full of assholes. It was lead by an asshole though, so he supposed he couldn't rightly complain.

This time he got to hear the general as he let out a bark of laughter. "The Fort, is it, son? Well, if you've all been safe there as long as you say, then, well, I suppose you're probably right. You're the only base that's survived that far into that damn jungle, so far as we know. If you're not crazy or lying, I suppose we'll need to do a more thorough check."

"Sir, I can't truthfully say I'm not crazy, but I can say I'm not lying. I'm not entirely sure you're not a fever dream though, or maybe a very clever enemy. Or some other part of this fucked up jungle. But I suppose I'll have to wait and find out. That is, sir, assuming you'll send someone for us?" He wanted to sound sure, confident, or at least mature. He sounded small though, weak and childish, a quivering note of hope and fear colliding in his throat. At least it was honest. Kent got up, leaving Stiles to lean against the panel limply. He heard his quick footsteps as he ran out of the building. He didn't even have the energy to wonder why.

"Son," the general said, and Stiles' chest swelled as he was struck by a sudden desire to straighten up and stand at attention. No wonder the man was a general, if he could make Stiles feel like that, in the middle of all that emotional turmoil. If you asked Stiles, he'd have confidently said the general could have gotten the position with that voice alone. "I give you my word." And Stiles--fuck, he believed him. With all his paranoia and fear and mistrust, he believed this fucking voice on the radio, and some part of him wanted to be suspicious of _that_ , but Stiles didn't have it in him. He just couldn't do it anymore. He slumped further against the panel, squeezing his eyes shut again tears.

"Thank you sir," he whispered into the radio. With his free hand he wiped a few tears away, hearing footsteps fast-approaching.

"Of course," General Lloyd said gruffly, but his voice was soft and warm, and Stiles couldn't bring himself to doubt a voice like that. "But," and Stiles' heart stopped, "I'm afraid I'll need to speak with your commanding officer, Stilinski. Or rather, the commanding officer of Ba--the Fort." Stiles smiled, and looked up to see Kent and Commander Wilkes striding in, both looking sweaty and harried, and he was at least ninety-eight-percent sure those battered camo pants were the commander's sleep wear. And he definitely didn't normally run around shirtless. Or shoeless. It was oddly refreshing to see the serious older man all out of sorts.

"Of course, sir," Stiles breathed into the receiver, feeling his overachiever heart starting to even out again. "He just got here. I'll pass the receiver over now. I look forward to meeting you in person, sir."

"You too, son," the general murmured, warm and fatherly, and Stiles reluctantly handed off the little chunk of plastic, warmed by his overheated hand.

Kent helped drag him to his feet as Commander Wilkes barked out a greeting to the general, sounding only slightly winded and about half as harried as he looked, although he didn't sound at all sleepy. Stiles sympathized. All the sleepiness had been burned right out of him.

He let himself be lead out of the building, towards the middle of the camp, near the tree and mushroom ring, where there were tables and chairs set about, some circling fire-pits and others set away for a bit of quiet, that served at their 'mess hall.' For a jungle, there was a surprisingly low amount of mosquitoes, within the Fort at least, making outdoor eating pretty pleasant. He and Kent half-collapsed on the grass, chairs just too much work. They stretched out a few meters from the mushrooms and stared up at the sky in silence. Eventually James and Laura came out to join them, just laying down with them for a while, until others started to gather around them and Stiles acknowledged he had to man up eventually. Arm braced against James, he sat up, feeling inexplicably exhausted. Like he'd lapped the Fort a hundred times rather than sitting on the floor crying into a radio for fifteen minutes. James sat up with him, so Stiles leaned against him as he looked around at all the wide, hopeful, resigned eyes. Laura's hand curled around his, and finally, finally Stiles smiled. Relaxing with a quiet sigh, Stiles looked around at these men he'd spent so much time with, at Paula chewing on her lip, at his own pack curled around him, and he finally got to experience what it was like to deliver good news.

"We're going home, boys."

The word spread quick, on whoops and shouts and sobs, and Stiles grinned, closed his eyes, and let himself hope.

Three days later found Stiles, the pack, and the whole damn Fort(well, minus the Fort itself; every inch of that had been captured in half a million photographs, and then left, open and potentially welcoming, while a string of helicopters carried her people off in as large of groups as they could carry) in the big, shiny base that was the main station. Stiles and his pack, including Laura, were in a very friendly-looking interrogation room. It had a couch and everything. But it was definitely an interrogation room. They ate the snacks set out anyway. They hadn't had cookies in a very long time. Laura actually growled and hoarded the whole place of triple-chocolate cookies, allowing everyone else to have only one. Since there were quite a few other treats to pick from, the men allowed their packmate her chocolate and devoured everything else in sight before anyone even made it in to talk to them, accepting the unassuming, friendly woman who had dropped them off.

Which was pretty impressive since the clock on the wall said it hadn't even been ten minutes by the time the door opened, and there had been five plates full of assorted snacks. The man who entered was broad and white-haired, although Stiles would put him only in about his forties, fifties at the most. He looked like a man who could as easily be (a very physically fit) Santa Claus as a ruthless killer. He took one look at the stack of clean plates, paused to look momentarily impressed, then smiled and shut the door behind him as he made his way over the take the loveseat across from them.

"Stilinski, right?" he asked, and Stiles was pleased to recognize the voice.

"General Lloyd?" he asked, voice far clearer than the last time the two had spoken. The general, whose attire clearly reflected his position, nodded.

"And if I'm not mistaken, these are James Conrey and Kent Nadar, correct?" the general inquired, indicating each man in turn, who nodded their recognition. Finger shifting to Laura, the general frowned, and said apologetically, "I'm afraid I don't know this one."

"Laura Wright, sir," she spoke up, and smiled crookedly. "The four of us bonded. When they asked me to go with the rest of the Fort, I...politely declined." Laura speak for 'I grabbed hold of Stiles and snarled when anyone got too close.' In all fairness, it was pretty polite for her, especially considering the circumstances. She had been on edge since the first helicopter landed, and treated every stranger equally like an enemy. The chocolate seemed to have mellowed her out. Or maybe she liked the general too. Or, most likely, being alone with her packmates for the first time since they got on the helicopter had finally put her wolf at ease enough for her to settle down and start to accept the concept of _safe._

"Ah. Yes, under...strenuous circumstances, some notoriously unbreakable bonds have been forged. I hope no one tried too hard to separate you from them?" The general looked concerned, leaning forward slightly. Stiles hoped he wasn't one to treat a woman like a helpless little girl who didn't belong in combat, because that would seriously ruin his growing affection for the man.

Laura flashed a bit of fang in a feral grin. "No, sir," she responded promptly, a fire in her dark eyed. General Lloyd sat back with a satisfied smile that had just a little feralness of its own. _He can stay,_ Stiles' inner Lydia decided. She'd said as much about Laura, so he figured her judgment was sound. Which made his judgment sound, possibly, except it still felt like trusting Lydia's judgment. Stiles usually did, anyway. Lydia should under no circumstances be questioned, not even the fictional one residing in some probably very tastefully decorated portion of his mind.

"Now then, I understand there are werewolves among you?" the general started, with the sort of tact Stiles could really appreciate. The four of them gaped at him a bit, and then they sat and listened to his speil. It was a pretty good speil. Obviously, since they agreed to it, even after learning all four of them had been declared missing in action to their families. Stiles protested that, but settled when assured his dad was safe and would be looked after and sent, well, compensation. Then Kent protested, and he didn't settle, so it was decided they would all fly in to New York and meet Kent's family. James shyly asked if they could maybe hit Texas, and the general didn't put up much of a fight. Laura asked if her parents and siblings were doing well, if they'd be getting "compensation" too, then she too relaxed when she learned they would. Later on, talking amongst themselves, Laura murmured that she had a lot of siblings(as they already knew, having all four practically exchanged autobiographies) and they didn't need one half-broken werewolf to mess up the order, especially when she would be leaving for war again and might die for real. That would just be cruel. Stiles agreed with her, and whispered where only his pack could hear, that he didn't want to face his childhood home, his friends and family, as this broken man they'd never known. James and Kent sympathized, but Kent said he couldn't bare to have his fiancee think him dead, especially once he learned she hadn't married or been in any other relationships(the government had their creeptastic sources after all, sources that said she had been generally acting like a widow). James just ducked his head and looked shy, said he didn't want to cause his Mama more hurt, but he couldn't bare lying to her either. Then by silent agreement they all decided to pretend they expected to outlive the war until proven wrong.

When they flew into New York, Kent's family and fiancee were waiting in the airport for him. He was right; his fiancee was one of the most beautiful women Stiles had ever seen, and she wept in joy as she threw herself into Kent's arms. The man picked her up and swung her around, laughing and looking happier than Stiles had ever seen him. That night, in the Nadar household, Stiles spoke quietly to Kent, privately, told him that the pack wouldn't begrudge him if he stayed. That they would all four remain pack no matter where they were or what they did. Kent smiled and ruffled his hair, which Stiles had finally gotten shaved off again, along with a nice shave for the short beard he'd been sporting(he hadn't even trimmed it at the Fort but the damn thing would never reach the impressive levels Kent and James' had before they regained access to proper shaving equipment). There had only been knives and old-fashioned razors to shave with at the Fort, and Stiles would rather be scruffy, thanks.

They stayed in New York for three months, participating in Kent's wedding and wishing the happy couple well, as well as buggering off for long enough for the two of them to have a good honey moon. Three days before they were scheduled to fly out, they drove eight hours to knock on Mrs. Stevens' door. She already had a flag, but Stiles brought her the dog tags, a strip of cloth with a few medals pinned to it, and finally he told Eddy's Mama story of how her son died. He told her he held out from the snake bite longer than any other recorded victim, and held her when she cried. He told her about the wendigo, and she believed him without question. Of course she did, she was Eddy's mama, and Eddy took after her far more than his granddaddy. He also told her about Eduardo's decision to go by Eddy, and she laughed a little, through her tears. He gave her the numbers to James and Kent's families, and then Eddy's mother wrestled a bit of his story out of him, via witchcraft, he assumed. She frowned severely and told him he should tell his father, and he smiled and told her why he couldn't. And then she held him because he was crying without really knowing why, and she wrote down his dad's number, promising not to spill the beans but that she would call and make sure he stayed alright. Eddy's mother was awesome and out in the car with his pack, he sobbed because she deserved her son. His dad deserved his son too, but Stiles didn't feel much like anyone's son, not anymore. It felt like the wrong decision, but it didn't much feel like there was a right decision to be made.

They flew in to Texas and spent a month with James' family, who owned a ranch and were so ridiculously, cliche-ly Southern that every one of them had a Southern accent by the time they left. Kent still didn't get Southern sweet tea, but he finally admitted fried chicken was totally delicious, and Stiles and Laura learned something about farmwork which they thought was pretty cool. James' whole family cried both when they arrived and when seeing them off at the airport, and James' younger sister looked enough like Erica that Stiles had to look away as his heart broke into a thousand pieces at the sight of her tears.

Then they donned their gear, shed the cloak of civilization, climbed into a plane, and flew back off to war.

Fifteen brave young men and women came and went from their team, astonishing individuals, all unique and brave and amazing. Some of them died, some of them went home, some of them just didn't click with the pack. All of them had names and stories and faces, and Stiles learned and loved every one of them. Some more than others, of course, but all of them were his pack, at least for a little while, and sometimes for a long while. Kent went home after two years, to his beautiful wife and their bouncing baby boy. Both of them were part of the pack too, Stiles could feel it, as he learned to sense things, learned to trust himself and expanded his senses beyond his wildest imagination. He could feel, on the fringe, a few other members of Kent's family, and a few of James', his sister and parents in particular. He thought he felt a brother on Laura's side, but having never met her family it was hard to be sure. And far, far off, a tiny, shiny cluster of blips on his radar, he felt his dad, and Melissa, and Scott, and all of the reestablished Hale pack. He felt when a new little star joined that little cluster--three little new ones, actually, though not all at once. He couldn't see them well, just knew they were there. He wondered if any of them could sense him, if he was a mysterious dot on their pack sense or if it was just his own abilities that allowed him to see them despite how frayed and worn and distant their bond was. It comforted him on long nights, to see those little dots.

There were six of them on the team towards the end of the seventh year of the war. James and Laura were still going strong by Stiles' side, although they had sustained a few scars even their werewolf healing could do nothing about. Stiles sported a whole gallery of scars, including one that ran from the hairline at his temple, down to the base of his ear, cutting diagonal over his cheekbone and the very edge of his eye. It looked pretty badass, and only messed with his vision sometimes, just a little. He could now reliably predict the rain with both his senses and his joints, and regularly proclaimed he was _too damn old for this_ while stubbornly leading the reborn Team Valkyrie into their bloody missions. The other three were Jacqueline, AKA Border Collie, a were-harpy eagle, of all things, with enough scars to rival Stiles, who was supposedly the best sniper in the world, and Stiles could believe it. He could confidently say he was one of the best, but Collie blew him right out of the water. Then there was the pyromancer Collin "just call me Wayde" Waydeson, who had the pretty self-explanatory task of blowing shit up. And yet he also managed to be the best at covert operations, managing to go from pretty to invisible to terrifying in a blink. Last they had their tech guy, who introduced himself as "just Ford," a short, evenly-built guy with glasses and perpetual scruff, who seemed like he'd been destined for a life in his mom's basement before fate or obligation or whatever sent him to the army. Collie was the oldest of them at 36, an army woman born and bred, and Ford the youngest at 19, with Wayde evening it out at a nice 25. And yet, not quite thirty, Stiles kind of saw both men as squishy babies. He just wanted to bundle them up and smoosh their cheeks all the time, no matter how competent they proved to be. Collie scared the shit out of him though, and her and Laura together were possibly worse than Lydia and Erica, if in an entirely different way.

The six of them had been a team for a year, and before Ford joined, the five of them had been together almost another year before that, before someone decided they needed a new tech guy. They got a mixed bag of missions, from the military equivalent of rescuing kittens from trees, to eliminating high-ranking people so well-guarded no other team could touch them. They workinged in tandem with another team over the years, picking people off individually or in small groups, in various venues and supposedly safe places. They never made a spectacle of it, didn't shoot anyone on live television or leave them for their families to find, if they could help it. They died in all sorts of ways, some blatant murder while others were subtle, some so much so that they would be recalled historically as accidents _._ Stiles even managed to kill one with a bouquet of flowers, which he hand-delivered, then plucked the single deadly blossom from the middle of so no one else would accidentally die. It made the front page, the man laying on his bedroom floor by the open window, still clutching a bouquet of flowers. The coroners hesitantly claimed it was an allergic reaction, since that was apparently what they said when the real answer was _we have no fucking clue._ Stiles had enjoyed that one a little. He would have felt bad, except most of their targets were very bad people. Some of them were practically just wrong-place-wrong-time, not quite good enough to spare but not honestly bad people. He rarely felt more than a twinge of guilt over any of them, either way.

Collie said he was more sociopathic than his "big doe eyes" made him look, and he took it as a compliment. Coming from her, it probably was one.

In the seventh year of the war, they took a lot of lives. Less than it felt like, but a lot, still. Most of them were long missions, requiring undercover time and cleverness and too much work overall.

And then it was Stiles' thirtieth birthday.

They were all sitting around having a drink, looking at pictures of Kent's three children and Paula and Dean(her husband; turned out they loved each other just fine outside of the Fort)'s two, and various pictures from other people that had either been part of the pack at some point, or been at the Fort, or just been close to them. They didn't make it into the states much, not for long, most of their leave time spent just outside the enemy line where they rested and recuperated, so they all lived for pictures, a little bit at least. Collie had two kids too, as it so happened, so they got pictures of them, and her niece and nephew, and her adopted daughter, and her husband, and--a lot of pictures. Collie had a lot of pictures, and seemed constantly to be getting more from various different people. Stiles was mature enough to admit he was jealous of her, and Kent, and, well, all of them. All the ones that escaped, went home and had families. He was particularly jealous of Collie, who magically juggled family and war like, well, she like was born into it. Which she apparently had been, so, fair was fair. His jealousy was a quiet buzz though, something low and manageable. It had burned bright for a few months, after Kent left, mostly, but he mellowed out. Didn't have it in him to really bedgruge the people he loved their happiness. Eddy's mother sent him a few pictures, here and there. Apparently she and his dad were friends. Not terribly close friends, but close enough that they sent each other holiday cards, and it just so happened that Scott was a cheesy bastard, so Stiles got a picture of Scott, Allison, Melissa, John, and two little girls. Only once a year, but that once a year picture kept him alive. He watched his dad age in those pictures, watched him liven with the two little girls, watched him become a grandpa. Apparently he and Melissa were still just dating, and Eddy's mother said they were _practically married_ but didn't give any insight as to why it remained only practically.

"Hey you, stop with the thinking," Laura chided, poking him in the forehead. His mind cleared of dark thoughts, or pushed them back at least, and he managed an honest smile for his packmate. She was still beautiful, ridiculously so, in fact. And still single. Less ridiculously. The last man she dated had been their teammate; he was one of the ones who died. There was a little velvet box containing a whole big, broken world on his body, and Laura still woke up crying sometimes. Stiles wondered about the stories of werewolves and mates, about the human ideas of soulmates, but he made sure to never mentioned them. If he said it, it might become true. He wanted his packmate to be happy, to find love and have a family. Not that the three necessitated each other, and she had informed him more than once that she was perfectly capable of being happy with or without children, or spouse for that matter. He wanted it for her anyway though. She accused him, once, of pushing his own desires onto others, and then whatever they had been fighting over was forgotten and she kissed his forehead and told him it was alright, he was allowed to want those things too. He was even allowed to have them. Stiles didn't believe her, and her sad eyes said she knew it, but it was nice to hear it anyway.

"There you go again," James complained, having apparently gotten up while Stiles was getting lost in thought since he was plopping down on Stiles' other side. "Thinkin. Cut that out. You know you ain't cut out for it." James poked him in the temple as Stiles' face scrunched in protest, but all three of them relaxed there on the couch together, nestled in like packmates ought. It felt warm and homey, familiar in the way only pack ever was anymore. Their team didn't have a set safe-house, and only Collie ever went home on leave, since she apparently loved flying and could afford to hop on a fast plane, or just turn into a bird and fly herself if she got the urge. They could all go home, technically. None of them were under contract not to to. They just--didn't. Usually one of them was hurt on leave, which made the pack want to stay and coddle each other. Sometimes they got leave after a packmate died or otherwise left, if they could be spared. But they rarely lodged in the same place twice, usually just checking in to the nearest safe hotel or base, whatever was available. They didn't have a territory, didn't have a home. Just each other, and their guns. They'd all been forced to retire a few weapons over the years, in which case they were usually sent off to wherever old weapons go to die(or be melted down and made into something new), but Stiles' first rifle with all its tallies, and James' old worn out knife, and the crossbow Laura's almost-husband had used, as well as a handful of other weapons and trinkets that were a little more than just that, were safely stowed away at James' home. Where they were all very well taken care of, because seriously, James' family was ridiculously cliche.

"Look, come on, they're doing it. This is history in the making, gentlemen!" Laura jostled them, pointing at the tv, then pulled her legs up on the couch and leaned back, and proceeded to eat popcorn despite the most non-popcorn-worthy scene occurring on their television. It really deserved something more like champagne or wine or maybe some sort of strong liquor. Stiles nonetheless shared Laura's popcorn, even though she always put a disgusting amount of butter on it. James moved the bowl to Stiles' lap and made him lean back so they could all comfortably share it. Collie was eating chocolate and had Skype going on one of Ford's laptops, her husband and kids squeezed into the frame as they watched the same thing. Half the world, if not more, was probably watching the same thing. Wayde and Ford were playing cards for M&Ms, because the whole team was classy as fuck. Considering they had helped make the scene playing out on live television possible, Stiles decided Team Valkyrie had more than earned the right to be uncultured swine if they wanted to.

The camera zoomed in an absurd amount while still managing a freakishly clear picture, and Stiles pulled out his old polaroid to snap a picture of Laura's open, awestruck face as a single signature ended the war. Well, several signatures and a lot of negotiating and way too much talking and bullshit for anyone outside of politics to handle without turning into a glazed-eyed, drooling mess, but still. It was a sweet look. She didn't even scowl at him, so he turned and took a picture of James too, getting Collie and her family in the shot as well since James was leaning forward. James had this hopeful, too-good-to-be-true look as he stared at the screen, so sweet and bright and sad that Stiles' heart ached. And he managed to catch Collie and her husband Sloan exchanging a look and smiles that held so much love that Stiles was impressed his camera didn't combust from the effort of capturing such a perfect moment. Laura stole the camera, and he smiled at her, just her, honest and warm, as a woman on the television announced in a hushed, awed voice that the United States was officially at a state of peace. Then they took a picture of Wayde and Ford because the idiots were staring gobsmacked at the TV while still stubbornly trying to play cards.

They didn't all pack up and go home after that, not yet. They had a few clean-up missions first, which took about eight months, all told. Collie left a few months in, since they weren't much in need of the best sniper in the world anymore; Stiles would do just fine, if they needed a sniper at all, which they did but only a few times. Wayde left six months after the war ended, and Ford stuck around til the end since "you three can barely handle notepad." Which, hey, Stiles was actually pretty good with a computer, but Ford was damn handy so he didn't argue. And then it was just the three of them, and they were kind of lost.

General Lloyd sat down with them one last time. He smiled at them. "The war's over," he said, which they already knew, of course, but he said it and it was real and Stiles--Stiles didn't know what to do. This, this was not a result he had planned for. He had lied when he said he was being optimistic. Just as agreed, he'd been pretending all along that he thought he would live, but that was all it was. Pretend. An act. And from the feel of the trembling bodies on either side of him, he wasn't the only one. The three of them, they had never expected this. Had never expected to actually outlive the war. They thought, when Kent left, even when Stiles was caught up in jealousy, _Good, at least one of us made it out._ Now though, now what were they supposed to do?

"You can stay in, of course," General Lloyd told them gently. "You're three of our best, you know that, and we'd never turn you away." And Stiles' heart thumped, and he wanted to snatch up the opportunity, wanted to greedily cling to what he knew. But the general who had long ago become their friend, not quite pack but close, smiled at him and the words stuck in his throat at that sad, old, tired look. "They probably want me to tell you to stay. To give you another spiel and tell you all the reasons you should never leave us. But they're idiots and they've never met you. They think you're loyal, think you're brave and strong and excellent weapons. And you are, you're all of those things. But you're so much more than that. And--you're not loyal to your country, not really. Don't argue, Stiles; I'm old, not blind. You're loyal to your friends, to your family. To the people and places and things you love. And you have served more than long enough. James, your mother would shoot you yourself, don't pretend she wouldn't. Laura, I know you're dying to see your family again. They saw you on that broadcast last year, you're right. They're looking for you. Let them stop. And Stiles." Stiles froze at that old, wise gaze settled on him, and he didn't know if it was fear or anticipation pounding in his chest. General Lloyd smiled, like he knew Stiles so well. And he did, he absolutely did. He knew all three of them, somehow, so much better than they'd every intended to allow anyone outside their own little circle to ever know them. "You can stop running now. It's okay."

Stiles let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. His head bowed, and he stared at the floor as it started to blur. General Lloyd rose and walked over to them. He kissed Laura's cheek, getting a matching one in return, hugged James, who hugged him back, and then he squeezed the back of Stiles' neck until he looked up and saw that old knowing smile.

"It's okay, son," he murmured, soft and warm, and when he leaned down to hug him, Stiles leaned up to hug him back. Then the three of then nestled together on the couch and the general left them to deal with their feelings as a pack.

They flew in to Texas, where all of James' ridiculously huge family decided all three of them needed to be hugged into boneless oblivion. He and Laura spent almost four months there, learning to be Southerners and avoiding things like champs. Laura had a short no-strings fling with a local, and Stiles learned that domesticated animals loved him even more than wild ones. Dogs had already shown him this in the past, as well as a few cats and birds here and there, but that was nothing compared to having the Conrey's "mean as fuck but damn good lines" stallion come galloping down the pasture to stick his face over the fence, straight into Stiles, demanding pets. It was hard enough to ignore a dog or cat asking for scritches; denying a fucking enormous monstrosity of a horse straight out of a Budweiser commercial any affection he so desired was completely beyond Stiles. James' youngest sister saw him with the stallion and screamed so loud the alpaca she was leading, normally a mild-mannered sort(as far as alpacas went), spit in her hair. The whole house came running then just stood around and watched as Stiles climbed over the fence and pet the big draft horse for a while, picking out cockles and burrs here and there. Apparently he only tolerated James' mother near him, and she had a bad back so he was rarely groomed to perfection. She kept him healthy though, kept his hooves clear, made sure he was as happy as a mean bastard could get.

Stiles decided to thank her for looking after his weapons and knickknacks(he picked up quite a few things over the years) by convincing the stallion to let a few other Conreys groom him. He warmed right up to the two youngest girls, conveniently, although he looked pretty determined to kick James and Laura straight into the next universe if they got within reach. No surprise there; even dogs tended not to be overly fond of werewolves, and while with Stiles' help James was slowly convincing some of the animals to at least tolerate him, for most of them it was just never going to happen. Absolutely not.

They taught Stiles and Laura to ride and James' mother insisted they call her Mama and she taught them a few recipes--and then told Laura to stay away from the kitchen before she blew up the house please kindly go be destructive elsewhere, and instead she taught Stiles a few recipes. He wasn't a complete disaster in the kitchen which apparently meant he had no choice but to learn them. He didn't actually even try to refuse, but that was because Mama was secretly terrifying and he would never refuse her anything ever. He valued his life. Sometimes.

And then one day James cornered them with a serious look on his face.

"You two can stay here for as long as you like," he told them firmly, in a tone that refused to be doubted. "You will never outstay your welcome. You can spend the next fifty years here and me and my family will love every minute of it. But Laura, you know what the general said was right. You've been thinking about your family since Aaron died. It's time you go home." He held up two tickets, one of which he held out to her. Straight to Colorado, the closest airport to her hometown. "And Stiles." Stiles stared at a ticket that would send him to California, to an airport an hour from Beacon Hills--the closest you could get without booking a private plane. He looked away from the ticket, up into James' eyes, and he wondered how he could be so utterly terrified after all he'd face while standing in a quaint room in a warm house with two of the people he loved most in the world. James smiled and pressed the ticket into his hand and Stiles wondered how these people knew him so well when he'd been trying so hard for so long to hide the truth from even himself. "Your last eight birthdays in a row have been monumentally horrible. I think maybe you're about due for a good one, don't you?"

Stiles stared at the ticket in his hand, and as his fingers closed gently around it, he knew, in his heart, he'd already agreed.

Stiles and Laura both wound up having to pay for extra baggage. They were carrying most of their worldly possessions, after all. The woman working the desk looked at the three of them(James' whole family had come of course, but only James got in line with them, since he was carrying most of their bags, because he was stupidly strong, Laura was a lady and it _was_ Texas, and Stiles needed a cane often enough that when Mama handed him a hand-carved one that was just the right height, he gave in and started carrying it around with him, slowly but surely learning how to use it properly), she looked at the dog tags and the scars, at Stiles' cane, and then she smiled and checked all their bags and even though Stiles had checked the prices online, it only came up to half of what he _knew_ it should have been. He tried to protest, but she just insisted it was correct and refused to argue it. Stiles was grudgingly impressed by her stubbornness.

They all hugged and cried at the gate, the Conreys standing back so the three could hug and cry some more by themselves. They'd talked to Kent and his family on Skype the night before and already done some crying, but apparently they were all now emotional people so they cried in the middle of the airport and hugged the shit out of each other. Even with the wolves being gentle with him, Stiles wound up feeling a bit like a grape being crushed into really terrible wine. Then he and Laura walked through customs together, putting their dogtags, wallets, Laura's ring, and Stiles' bag of tricks(weapons omitted; most of his weapons would stay with the Conreys until he was settled in somewhere, and then they'd mail them to him. Possibly illegally. And if he decided to go back, then, well, everything fit pretty nicely into the bags and suitcases Mama had dug up for him and Laura, so moving back wouldn't be so hard.) on the conveyor belt. He smiled sheepishly when the metal detector went off, and ignored Laura's knowing grin as he untucked his shirt and pulled it up to show off one of his bullet wounds.

"It hit my hipbone weird. They couldn't quite get all the fragments out," he explained, watching them wave their wand around him. They looked up at him with a respect that made him uncomfortable, so he tried to grin, tried to put them at ease, get them to look anywhere else but at him. He wasn't necessarily ashamed of his scars, but he maybe didn't like airing them around people much. Or at all, save for his three closest packmates at least. Maybe he did mind the scars. Maybe he wasn't going to admit it even under penalty of dental appointment.

Thankfully, the security guards relaxed, even took a few steps back to give him some space. "Have a good day, sir," one of them said, and it sounded like a lot more than just their usual "sir." Stiles didn't much feel like he deserved that, so he tried to ignore it, focusing instead on reclaiming his belongings and putting everything back where it went, including the duffel bag over his shoulder which would wind up in the overhead compartment.

Laura shouldered her bag and moved to hipcheck him, grinning affectionate wickedness at him. "I love watching you get all shy and bashful. It's adorable. I can't believe you're our alpha. You're so cute." She stayed glued to his side as they walked, and then they stood staring at her terminal(a word Stiles hated) for a while. They both simultaneously dropped their bags and wrapped around each other, her face burying into his shoulder and his into her hair. Neither said a word at the warm wetness they hid against each other.

"How the fuck are we supposed to do this, Stiles?" she whispered, and a hoarse laugh escaped him.

"I dunno," he said truthfully. "I was thinking of just walking up to the house and yelling 'surprise!'" It got a laugh out of her, and a punch in the kidney for him. Which fucking hurt, even if it was a very, very light punch, at least by werewolf standards.

"Oh my god you're totally going to do that, aren't you? You're a fucking asshole," Laura whispered against his shoulder. He laughed into her hair.

"Probably. I can't really think of anything else. I could call ahead maybe? But I don't really know. I'm figuring just wing it. Seems like the only option really." He stroked her hair as he spoke, ignoring the feel of stares boring into them. She trembled in his arms, rubbing her nose on his shirt. Which he maybe should have complained about, because come on Laura, hygiene, but it was too cute and puppy-ish for him to really care. Stiles kissed the top of her head and sighed. "Think of all the shit we've done over the past eight years. Can you imagine the faces of most of the people and monsters we've met if they could see us now? Fucking shaking in our boots at the thought of going home to see our families. Who love us, by the way. Like a lot. I mean, I'm pretty sure they're going to kill us, but at least they'll be doing it out of love, right?"

Laura snorted which, ew. He pinched her side in retaliation. "You are the absolute worst," she told him fondly. "Why do I love you? This was a terrible decision. You're an awful alpha. I take it all back. I hate you."

Stiles snickered, kissing her temple this time. "I love you too," he told her, hugging her a little tighter. "You're going to be fine. They're probably going to yell at you, but, worst case scenario? The worst that can happen is you go back to the Conreys'. And admit it, you totally loved it there. Especially since that guy was trying to woo James right under our noses."

"Ugh, oh my god, you're so right that was so cute. He acted like we were going to bite him if he made the wrong move," she mumbled into his shoulder, teeth scraping him as she grinned around the words.

"Laura, we would have," Stiles reminded her gently, earning himself another laugh, one that sounded a lot less wet than the last. She finally pulled away to look up at him, smiling broadly.

"We're going to see our families, Stiles," she whispered, and he didn't even try to stop his answering grin. "They're going to be pissed as hell and they'll probably treat us like teenagers who ran off into the night and we won't get a word in edgewise because everyone will be so busy yelling and asking why that they'll never bother listening to our answers." His grin widened because, well, when she put it like that.

"It's going to be awful. I can't wait," he breathed, brutally honest to the point of (more) tears, and she gave him a huge, open-mouthed grin.

"Me neither." Then they hid their faces again, giggling and snorting like the idiots they were at the core, until someone calling out departure times over the speaker system forced them apart. They clasped forearms, grinning at each other with overbright eyes, then kissed cheeks, and he kissed her nose to make her giggle, and they finally separated to pick up their bags.

"I'll miss you," he told her.

"I'll think of your stupid face every night," she promised.

"If you don't call me every day, I'll fly out there and kick your ass," he answered.

"Go confess your stupid feelings, a fifteen year crush is completely pathetic, Stiles," she responded mercilessly.

"You're a witch," he told her, leaning in.

"I love you," she crooned, and they kissed cheeks again, and she kissed his nose so he'd make a face which he made so she'd giggle, and then they finally parted, knowing at least that it wouldn't be so terribly long before they saw each other again; they'd never let too long go by before getting the pack together. Although if not for Skype, they would most definitely not have been able to tear apart anyway. The three of them were even more disgustingly codependent than they'd been back when Kent left. Actually, Kent leaving had probably caused them to become all the more codependent. It was a wonder they were managing this, actually, and it spoke of just how much they loved their families. Also ridiculously levels of stubbornness. Yeah. There was a lot of that in Stiles' pack. He was a terrible influence on them.

With a warm heart and slightly less misgivings, Stiles plodded off. He had a flight to catch, after all.

After stuffing his bag into the overhead compartment, Stiles settled into his window seat(always a window seat; he liked to watch the clouds, and he got claustrophobic if he couldn't), pulled out his Nook(just because he loved books didn't mean he would overlook the delightful convenience of an e-reader; trying to lug all his books around was inconceivable, just his notebooks filled a whole suitcase, with a good amount of overflow into his duffel bag), and prepared for a long flight. When the curious little girl sitting next to him stared with enough intent to feel like a physical poke at his dogtags, Stiles gave in and talked to her, answering her innocent questions as best he could and telling her the very watered down versions of a few of his war stories under her mother's watchful but warmly amused eye. Fortunately she eventually fell asleep and, flashing her mother a smile, Stiles went back to reading. She hugged him when they landed, telling him a polite and adorable thank you for the story time, and he felt like the Grinch at the end of the movie for a minute as she waved and smiled and said "Bye-bye." It was stupidly cute. Kids were impossible. He had no idea how to cope with that sort of adorableness.

He let everyone else go by, sitting back in his seat so no one would notice and try to be nice. He'd had enough nice for one day. It was already dark out and he was sore and he really wanted off the plane, but he didn't want to wrestle his duffel and his cane around a bunch of passengers, so he waited. He didn't mind, he was pretty used to waiting.

Eventually everyone had gone past though, so he sighed and got up to collect his things, sliding his Nook back into the bag. The flight attendants smiled at him as he hobbled off the plane, the crimps and cramps from the flight forcing him to use his cane properly, and he tried to return their smiles instead of grimacing and looking like he really just wanted to lay down on the floor and maybe just stay onboard for wherever they were headed next. He had to get a trolley to get all his things, and then he stared at the line of cabs for a while before heading towards the rental car service area with all his things in tow. Taxi'ing from LA to Beacon Hills would be exceptionally uncomfortable, and he'd need some way to get around town.

The first vehicle he was shown was a powder blue jeep. New, nothing much like his old jeep except in that basic description, but still. He sighed and shot a look heavenwards, a silent _I see what you did there._ And then he rented the jeep.

It met all his requirements, after all. And it was fateful. Stiles had found that fighting fate was sort of exhausting, so he saved it for important things, things that weren't vehicle rentals.

He paid the extortionist price, including insurance because he knew his life, then the man helped him pack everything into the back without being asked. Stiles wanted to mind, but honestly he was so sore that he couldn't help being grateful, so he smiled his thanks, even if he was growing increasingly tired of helpfulness. It felt weird when no one was shooting at him.

Driving was weird, and he wound up fiddling around in an empty chunk of the airport parking lot for about ten minutes before he finally felt confident. Not that he hadn't been driving recently; hell, he'd driven in Texas. But that had somehow always been with someone else in the car, or a military vehicle. This jeep, in California, it just felt...Different. He muttered unflattering things to himself, tapped on the GPS for a little while, then started towards--not quite home. But something that felt an awful lot like it, even after all these years.

Naturally, the only hotel in town and both motels were booked full. For no apparent reason whatsoever. He pointed at the sky and didn't think anything specific, just projected annoyance. He was still agnostic, had pretty much always been, but he had spent long enough feeling like someone(God, Fate, _Bast,_ whoever) was playing with him that it felt a bit like talking to someone who never talked back, just laughed and played with him some more.

So Stiles wasn't sure if there was a god, or gods, or some form of cosmic being(s), but if there was, whoever was looking after him, was kind of an asshole. His guardian angel was Gabriel. Loki, or Coyote, or one of the Tricksters took a personal interest in him at some point. Probably because Stiles always liked the Trickster and asshole-ish characters. Fuck. Cruel fate and irony. A dangerous combination.

Muttering and rubbing at bleary eyes, he drove to a nice secluded place he knew the deputies tended to overlook, parked the jeep someplace particularly out of the way, locked the doors because he wasn't an idiot, then crawled into the back seat and went to sleep folded up in an awkward position and thinking of the ridiculous bed he and Laura had shared at the Conrey house(He still wasn't sure if Mama or someone thought they were together or not, and kind of figured it didn't matter. Most people tended to assume either two of their trio was dating, or they were in a polygamous relationship, and it hadn't bothered him since he learned it didn't bother his packmates either). Honestly, he'd slept in a lot worse places, so while the jeep had nothing on his and Laura's bed at at the Conreys', it wasn't so hard to doze off on. Especially considering how damn tired he was.

Naturally, because these sorts of things came in threes, Stiles woke up to the crack of dawn and someone knocking on his window. Experiencing flashbacks to the few drunken debauchery moments he'd had over the years, he flailed out a hand, slapping it against the glass so whoever it was would stop that obnoxious knocking.

"Son, are you alright?" came a familiar voice. He didn't stop to think about why it was familiar until he had already unlocked the door and shoved it open, twisting around to tumble out into the crisp early morning air with the sort of grace that was more along the lines of his high school years. When tired, he tended to revert. He rubbed sleep from his eyes with one hand while pushing up his shirt to scratch at his happy trail and maybe a few scars with the other, as he mumbled something that might have passed for confirmation if one were fluent in sleepy garble. See? Classy.

"I don't know if you're new in town, but this is private property. You can't park..." The words trailed off into silence as Stiles dropped his hands and met eyes he still knew just as well as his own. The crisp white shirt and jeans were unfamiliar, and there were more lines on the face than he knew what to do with even with the yearly Christmas picture, but he'd always know those eyes. "Stiles." The word came out all broken and crackly, full of tears and emotions and way too much. And Stiles was, well, Stiles. He smiled sheepishly and threw up a shitty wave.

"Hi Dad," he said because he was a terrible son. "Long time no see." Terrible, horrible son.

Tears welled up in his dad's eyes which was _fucking awful_ and he instantly started to panic, hands lifted and mouth opening, ready to fill the air with literally anything so long as it would make his dad _stop that right now._ Instead, he got an older man who was still almost exactly the same height as him practically throwing himself forwards, wrapping his arms around Stiles and dragging him in for a hug that was about nine million times tighter than a sixty-or-so-years-old man should have been able to manage. Or maybe that was the aches and pains of a plane ride, a night folded up in the backseat of a jeep, and all his multitudes of scars talking. Not literally, because that was even creepier than talking tattoos(not that he had any of those, but he knew they existed, and that was more than enough) but they sure seemed pretty vocal when they felt the urge.

He didn't even care though, just wrapped his arms around his dad and held on as tight as he could. For just a minute, he put everything aside, the war, his pack _s_ , all that he had done and all the lies and fuck-ups. For just a minute, wrapped up in his dad's arms, Stiles let himself just be a son, a son who had been very sorely missed. He hid his face in his dad's neck and apparently he had turned into a Disney character as some point because he found himself choking down sobs not a moment later.

"I'm so sorry, Dad," he managed to get out around literal gross sobbing. "So sorry." It was all he could say, all he knew how to say. Just _I'm sorry_ , because he was, he was so fucking sorry, but he knew if he had to do it all over again, he'd do the same thing. Wouldn't dare change anything, because he'd missed so much, but he'd gained so much too. And he wanted to share all that with his dad, wanted to hear about all that he'd missed too, and all he could do was hang on to his dad and cry and apologize and hope that somehow, he could have that. Somehow, he could have this one thing. This one thing he'd been wanting for so, so long. He loved his pack. He wouldn't trade his pack for the world, not even for his dad, he was pretty sure, which was like a knife to the heart to realize. But if he could somehow have both...Sobbing into his dad's shoulder, wrapped up in a strange but still familiar, _always_ familiar warmth, he found himself hoping. Hoping not for _just a little bit._ But hoping for all of it. Hoping for all of his families, for his friends and packs, for all the things he had _dreamed_ of. And to that _whatever_ out there in the universe that liked to tug on his strings, he sent one desperate plea. Not with words, not really, he didn't need that for this sort of thing. Because, as his friends had taught him, prayers and wishes, they were so much more than words. _Please_ , he thought as loud as he could, a plea full of all of his love, all his hopes, all his dreams, full of memories and photographs and longing, full of all the things he had missed and the things he so desperately wanted to share. And far up above, unobserved, in the part of the sky that was still just a little closer to dark than day, a tendril of light whisked across the sky and disappeared with none the wiser. Just long enough to catch one little _Please_ that was so very, terribly, wonderfully big.

In retrospect, he probably should have expected the punch to the jaw. But he also figured he deserved it, so while he shifted slightly to soften the blow, he left it tip back his head, expose his throat while saving his dad (and himself) the pain of worsening the crack in his jaw that may or may not ever go away. It had the added _not-_ bonus of showing off where someone had tried to strangle him with a thin metal cord(garotte, they called it, without technical accuracy, but it was also sort of accurate anyway) and left a nifty little scar before Stiles threw the attacker over his shoulder and onto the ground, where he beheaded him neatly. Well, not neatly. Beheadings were really not very neat things. But back to the delicious irony-coincidence-trickster fuckery; that sliver of slightly different textured skin that served as scar tissue was only visible when he tilted his head back at that certain angle and there was good lighting and hey, lookie there, a convenient _sun_ pointed right at his throat. Dropping his head hastily, he rubbed self-consciously at the scar, hoping his dad hadn't noticed. Those hopes were immediately dashed by the look of horror and recognition suddenly lighting his dad's eyes. Stiles sighed. Technically he'd known it was coming. He'd just sort of hoped to put it off a while longer. But General Lloyd was right; he'd done enough running. It was time to stop. He could--he could stop now. It was okay. Even if he wasn't really sure _how_ to stop, he'd figure it out. Because that's what he did, after all. He figured stuff out. He rolled with the punches. He looked Death in the face, and he smiled, tipped his hat to the old codger, and went on his merry way.

And, apparently, as a grown goddamn 30-year-old man, he clung to his daddy and sobbed like a little child. Oh well. At least they weren't in an airport this time.

Sitting down on the edge of the back seat of his rental, he grinned up at his dad, and, completely out of the blue, he felt something _right_ settle down in his gut and get all cozy and comfortable. He had no idea what the do with that, honestly, except just shrug and accept it. A skill he was particularly well-versed in, honestly.

"Where the hell--?" the former sheriff started, looking relieved, pissed, worried, disbelieving, and a whole bunch of other things all at once. That could not be good for his heart. He squinted at his dad. He _looked_ lean. Not skinny, just fit. Healthy.

"I hope Melissa has been making you eat healthy. If you mark my rising from the dead by having a heart attack, I will, uh--I will sic Melissa on you. After she's done chewing me out. And maybe after I find a place to stay." Hands in pockets, despite how awkward that was when awkwardly perched on the edge of a seat, he looked around, face scrunching around a headful of thoughts.

"A place to stay?" his dad asked, incredulous, drawing Stiles' gaze back around, then smacked him upside the head.

"Oow," Stiles whined, scrunching his eye--the one with the scar--closed and making a pitiful face at his dad. "I don't remember you being this abusive."

"And I don't remember giving you permission to _disappear for eight fucking years you brat._ " John was definitely not the sheriff anymore, but that was definitely his sheriff face. His very-angry-and-about-to-rain-down-fire-and-brimstone face. Which, despite having met people who actually could rain down fire and brimstone, was very scary. Stiles squeaked, hands lifting in an automatic defense, only to find he had...nothing. No defense. So instead he just dropped his head and hands with a heavy, heavy sigh.

"I'm sorry," he said, again, and his dad sighed too. Then he was pulled into another hug, gentler and more awkwardly positioned, but no less warm.

"You're an idiot," John sighed fondly, and Stiles laughed, because seriously, how had he managed to surround himself with so many people so similar in such weird, obscure ways.

"So I've been told," Stiles drawled. Then he dared look up at his dad, and when he found a smile there, he smiled back. Tears welling in his eyes again, he swallowed past the lump in his throat. "I have so many things to tell you, Dad," he whispered. "So much more than you could ever imagine. So many people to introduce you to, too. You're going to love them, all of them. But--I think...I think everyone," he flinched, amended, "everyone willing to see me at least, deserves an explanation. And as good a story as it is, I'd really rather not tell it more times than I have to. Not all at once, at least. I mean, I will if you want me to, I'll tell as many stories as many times as you want, just--" He twined his fingers with his dad's, held on tight. "Be there for me to tell them to, okay? And maybe tell me some stories of your own and--"

"Stiles," John interrupted, laughter invading his serious expression, damp eyes or not. "God you are such an idiot." Stiles wasn't sure why, but he got another tight hug for that, and he patted his dad's back only _slightly_ awkwardly. The hug started off feeling like it was going to be short, but neither wanted to let go so they hung on for a while, tight and warm and safe, just the two of them in the middle of what was now apparently private property. Huh. He wondered when that had happened. Finally they had to part and John grinned, ruffling the short hair Stiles was diligently growing out, more roughly than necessarily frankly, getting another squawked protest from Stile, who switched to mutinous glaring without even the slightest bit of heat behind it when he was released. "I'll call a pack meeting. Fortunately it's a Monday, so all the kids--there's kids now, but if you're saving your story for later, then so am I--can be dropped off at daycare or school and then make their way over."

"Over where?" Stiles asked, perking up, and for no reason whatsoever John rolled his eyes and looked liked the most put upon person on earth.

"You are such a--where do you think, dumbass?" Stiles started to reply, but apparently John had a built in stupidity detector since he interrupted before Stiles could even try to guess. "The house. _Our_ house. What did you call it? Casa de Stilinski?" For all his wording, there was no hesitation in John's use or pronunciation of the stupid name Stiles had always called their house by.

Stiles gaped. Full on, what-is-happening-in-my-universe, jaw lost somewhere on the ground, gaped. John grinned, looking annoyingly smug.

"You're not the only one with stories, kiddo," John said, and the only reason Stiles didn't crumple was he was already sitting down, leaning conveniently against the back seat. No one had called him 'kiddo' in eight years. Son, sure, but kiddo? It was stupid. Just one little word. But it knocked the breath right out of him. "But they can wait. I've got to go pick up Melissa, then probably call Scott 900 times before giving up and calling Allison instead." Stiles snorted. He and his dad really were scary similar in some ways. And, apparently, some things never changed "Have you still got your old key?" On reflex, Stiles dug around for a minute, then produced his wallet and tugged out the old key he'd somehow hung onto for so long. A memento to his old life more than anything else. "Good. It should still work. Just let yourself in. And make yourself, well," John smiled, and there was no edge to it, no sadness, no...secrets. It was just a smile, one that was just for Stiles. "At home." A shiver went through Stiles at the word. He managed to return John's hug, then sat staring at his old key for a long time. He had thought it was useless. He had thought it was just a little piece of nostalgia. Not even a future goal, just a bit of metal full of memories. Now he didn't even know what it was.

He put his boots on, with his camo pants but no jacket because despite the morning chill it was a bit too warm for that. He pulled his dog tags from underneath his white shirt, displaying them proudly, then he sat down in the driver's seat, thought about driving four-wheelers over the sort of ground even they weren't really capable of handling, and put te jeep in geer.

And then, well, Stiles drove home.

***

_The next part could be considered an epilogue. Or this whole thing could be considered chapter one in a BAMF!Stiles-centric fic of some sort. Maybe. But...Yeah. This could be considered an epilogue, largely because later on I might go back and rewrite this, expand on it more, but this is at the end of about....eight? possibly more hours of doing literally nothing but writing this. For no apparent reason. Literally none. At all. So. Yeah. Typing. Uh, it should be mentioned that at this point there's 23k words. All written in one fucking night(and then editted all to hell over a period of a few weeks). So yeah that about sums it up and holyfuck this fic got out of hand, for serious._

***

The door still took a little twist and jimmy with the key to get it open, but when it did swing open, it didn't squeak right. Stiles, duffel bag over his shoulder once more, stood there staring at the door that _didn't squeak right_ for a lot longer than he was comfortable with. He spared a moment of gratitude that there was no one around to see. Or at least, no one around to comment. Knowing this town, there were probably at least three creepers watching him already, despite it being barely seven in the morning.

Stiles crept into the house, and he was only mildly ashamed to admit it. He found himself trying to move with absolute stealth in what was probably an empty house. He peeked into the kitchen. It looked a little barren, but still more-or-less the same. The hallway had a new paintjob and a lot less pictures; probably relocated to the McCall-Stilinski house. The living room was--well, a bit empty. But there was that stupid old couch with the spring that always jabbed houseguests in the butt, and his father's old, comfy recliner. He sat down on the sofa, resisting the urge to explore the whole house in detail, and set the duffel bag on the coffee table. After a moment's hesitation, he got up and headed back to the jeep, grabbed the suitcase full of notebooks, and dragged it inside. He took a seat once more, and was proud of himself for only strapping one knife to his ankle. It wasn't so hard to sneak things onto a plane, so long as it wasn't a carry-on, and no way was Stiles going somewhere without a few weapons, even if guns would be pushing it. Good thing he managed to get a botanist's license though so no one questioned him carrying a fuckton of plants around, both dried and living. He hadn't had his own place in a long time, but after the Fort he'd had plenty of time to find a spot on the Conrey's property that they didn't really use and which fit his needs perfectly. He'd planted all his precious plants there and wrote out very careful instructions for how best to care for them which the Conreys were all too happy to follow. He'd been relieved every time they confirmed that all his plants were still growing strong, sending pictures of them along with family photos. They were probably feeling pretty miserable after so long cooped up in a bag, so he pat the canvas with an affectionate apology and murmured a breathless, barely-there promise that he'd get them properly planted again soon. Hopefully.

His dad was the first one to arrive, with Melissa not quite literally on his arm. Stiles got a slap on the shoulder, and then a bone crushing hug, and a face peppered in kisses. Then his dad informed him cheerfully that he'd just called a "Pack meeting at Casa de Stilinski" and hadn't told anyone. Because yeah, they were definitely related.

Upon arrival, Scott punched him in the jaw, fortunately on the opposite side of the crack. Then, before the stinging had even begun to fade(werewolf punches hurt, even if Stiles had softened it as best he could without actually dodging), collapsed all over Stiles in a blubbering mess. Allison wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his wet cheeks and cried. Lydia gave him a no-nonsense slap in the face, then told him she would accept payment for the past eight years in the form of _new and interesting knowledge_ , which he was pleased to declare she would have aplenty. Jackson looked vaguely disgruntled yet somehow happily as he shoved Stiles' head down, growled a wordless threat that Stiles understood anyway, and then they went to sit in his dad's old chair. Boyd showed up and dragged in chairs from the kitchen, then grabbed Stiles in a bearhug that had him squeaking and begging for air. That done Boyd took his seat, looking content. Yay no bodily violence from Boyd. Erica stomped on his toe, then kissed his head, and let him coo over her round belly. She'd actually started to be snarky, to refuse in some smartass fashion, but he supposed she saw the tears in his eyes since instead she threaded her fingers through his short, sun-bleached hair and let him rest his face against her belly. There, he close his eyes, took a deep, centering breath, and reveled in that unmistakable scent and feel and pulse of _life._ He kissed her belly full of promises and futures, unashamed of the tears drifting down his cheeks, then settled back onto the couch where Allison and Scott promptly turned into monkeys. Isaac burst in, took one look at the couch, then threw himself into the puppy pile. Stiles whined and groaned until everyone was rearranged in such a way that they weren't killing him. Isaac didn't require anything special, just a rub of his curls and some snuggles and then he seemed perfectly content

Derek was last. Of course he was. Derek was a prima donna. Cora swept in ahead of him, gave Stiles a death glare, then sat down with Lydia and Jackson. Peter gave him a speculative look, having appeared from fuck-knows-where, the giant creep, then took up his apparently still usual creeper spot in the corner.

And then there was Derek. Derek of the broody eyebrows and galaxy eyes. Stiles wondered if stars felt anything when they went supernova. He thought, if they did, they'd look a little like Derek's eyes.

Derek remained standing, arms crossed, staring expectantly at Stiles.

Yep. Some things never changed.

Stiles sighed and opened up his suitcase. He pulled out his very first journal, and opened to a crude sketch of the monster from his memories, way, way back when it all began. Well, he supposed it all really began when Peter bit Scott, but that felt more like a prologue than a beginning. 

"Our first mission went straight to hell, and it all just kinda went downhill from there. And then, eventually it went up. But first the down part." And then, with the journals to help him, he started telling them about the years he'd spent so far away. He didn't tell them everything, couldn't possibly, but he told them as much as he could, knowing they'd get more details later. He could already see the interrogation in Lydia's eyes.

"What the hell is with this jungle?" Scott groaned not even five minutes in.

"I found hell, and it was a fucking jungle. Fuck the rainforest," Stiles said wisely before continuing.

"White aconite?" Lydia interrupted. He grinned.

"I brought back saplings and seeds and stuff. You will love them," he promised. She looked pleased.

"When we got back, General Lloyd said we'd already been declared MIA," Stiles was saying at one point, journal still open on a picture of the Fort. "I figured I wasn't leaving the military, figured I'd actually be dead soon anyway, so I just...let it stay." Every wolf in the room growled and Stiles wisely moved on.

"So you're really their pack alpha?" Scott asked, sounding subdued but interested.

"The one and only."

"What does that make you for us?" Isaac inquired.

Stiles shrugged. "It's up to you."

Something dark shifted just behind him, moving closer. The jungle throbbed with malicious intent and in the distance he heard Laura's pistol go off. Kent called out a warning of impending detonation, Collie responding over the radio that she had their target in her sights. _Make the call,_ a calm voice that was and wasn't Stiles dictated--and then he blinked and found Peter kneeling, staring up at him, hands raised in a placating motion as soft, soothing sounds without much real meaning slipped from his lips. There was a knife buried hilt-deep in his shoulder, cutting through tendon but missing anything vital. It took Stiles only a moment--maybe two--to realize the knife was his. Taking a step back, he yanked the knife out, presenting an apologetic smile-grimace.

"It's a weak strain," he said, referring to the wolf's bane Peter could no doubt already feel coursing through his veins. "We called it baby-blue--the petals are blue. Creative, I know. But, it's weak enough that you don't even need an antidote, and the effects only last about ten minutes." More than enough time to turn an immobilizing blow into a killing one. He didn't say that though. "It'll take a little extra time to heal until then. Sorry."

Peter's hands were still up, still soothing, although he'd gone silent. So, Stiles noticed, had everyone else. He pulled out a rag to clean the blade, staring down at it so that he wouldn't have to face whatever he might find in their faces. "It's a bad idea to sneak up on me," he told the knife carefully, oh-so-very-carefully. _Calm_ , he thought and tried to project. He was calm. Yeah, right. With a sigh, he returned the knife to its holster and backed away, hands up, placating. Safe. He found a corner and leaned into it, relieved it had only taken half a dozen steps. It was the corner Peter had previously been lurking in, he noticed, and didn't miss the irony.

"Eight years in a war zone, guys," he said,  finally lifting his eyes to watching them carefully. They looked cautious, guarded. He imagined he looked about the same. Scott looked like a wounded puppy, Allison the concerned Disney princess, Lydia looked at him a bit like a lab rat, and Derek--Stiles didn't know what Derek's face said. No words, that was for certain. His dad just looked sad and old. "I've met men who got lost in that jungle for days and came out the other side mad as a hatter. We spent _years_ there. The farm--the farm was good. Big, open. Trees were far and few between, and everything and everyone made a lot of noise, or they were pack and we knew how to move around each other. I can't--I don't know if I'm here to stay. I'm not Stiles, not the one you knew. I'm just a soldier without a mission."

His hands and eyes dropped simultaneously, right down with his heart. Because that's what he was. And he had no idea how to change that.

And then someone stepped forward, and he looked up into Derek's galaxy eyes as the alpha settled an unhesitating hand on Stiles' shoulder. Those eyes had kept Stiles going on long, dark nights, along with that cluster of _pack_ on the edge of his senses that now surrounded him like suns to his black hole. "No," Derek said, gentle, firm. So much had changed. Stiles stared with wonder at this unfamiliar Derek. This Derek who was, dare he say it, _warm._ "You're a man who's finally come home." And Stiles figured, well, some things just weren't really worth arguing over.

"Man. Laura and James are going to love you," Stiles told him, breaking the tense atmosphere. He looked around at the grinning faces of his family, his pack, and could already feel the pack bonds dragging him back in.

_Well,_ he thought. _I've probably seen stranger things._

Derek guided him back to the couch with a hand on his shoulder, walked him right into the pack without even knowing it. Stiles sat down, pulled out the next journal, and continued his story, although he warned them that he fully expected them to tell their stories too. He saw the kids' pictures, okay, he wanted details.

As it turned out, family was a pretty strange thing too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand I think I'll have two "epilogues" for this. Maybe some BAMF!Stiles drabbles. One epilogue's just to clarify some character details while the other is an actual traditional epilogue thing.
> 
> I don't watch or read a lot of military stuff of the accurate variety and really just felt like playing with an older, BAMF!Stiles. I also screwed with the canonverse in a lot of very obvious ways, completely ignoring pretty much everything after halfway through season 2 as per my usual and just sort of fucking around.
> 
> It's my personal headcanon that the pack is 5ever and Stiles and Scott are soulbrothers and Derek and Stiles are soulmates, but I ignored that because I wanted this to be less fluff and a little more dark and gritty.
> 
> Also, this was just going to be a "Stiles grows up into a BAMF away from the pack and comes back able to kick their ass" fic, but then I started describing what happened to Stiles and...yeah. I'm sorry if the beginning's really confusing, or if the pacing's weird. I wanted...well like I said, I wanted dark and gritty. I threw away realism in favor of as much badassery and...grittiness as I could get. This turned into more of a war story than I expected though, wow.
> 
> Do people talking on military radio say "over" at the end of everything? They do in this fic. Don't question me. I ignored whole chunks of the modern era even though this is technically a future fic. There was a lot of "IDGAF" going on I'm so sorry.


	2. Less "epilogue" more "author's notes sorta kinda."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I felt the need to give Stiles' pack a little bit more info. Just a little. Possibly more is available if anyone's interested though. I'll reiterate things from the fic just for clarification.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This contains no actual story, just some details about side characters that I didn't know how to fit in to the story or the next chapter. There WILL be an actual epilogue/second chapter, and potentially further continuation if I get a sudden urge for BAMF!Stiles(which I might) or any requests in this 'verse.
> 
> You do not need to read this to understand the next chapter, and all information contained within is either additional or redundant and unnecessary overall. Basically, I started taking notes to myself somewhere in the middle of writing Stranger Things and then it evolved into this.

Kent is genetically Native American(mostly), but raised by hindu/Indian parents and a very religious, old-fashioned devout hindu/Indian grandmother. (I'm trying to walk the fine line between just enough political correctness, and too much. I want to make their both ethnicity and religion clear though because it felt at least somewhat important) He had an arranged marriage, which I have no idea whether or not is common or not or how such things are handled, but he talked to this girl via Skype(text only) and they fell in love and it was actually pretty romantic and sweet. His fiancee/wife's name is Annika and he winds up calling her Annie, which may or may not be a little shout out to Eddy. They conceive their first child, a boy, on their honeymoon, and Kent officially retires from the service(with more than enough psychological and physical damage to make it a damn honorable discharge) to be with his family. They have two more children, a boy and a girl. The first boy, by the way, was named Eduardo. They named the girl after Kent's grandmother. Kent never broke away from his family and embraced his ancestor's religion when he returned, but with an open mind and heart. He got a job designing computers and technology, and traveled around the world to talk about their inventions and dreams.

Eduardo, AKA Eddy, was about a third Latino, all-told. His dad left when he was about six, and his Mama raised him maybe a bit too harshly, but their house was never short on love. His aspirations basically boiled down to "mechanic" before the war. Had he survived, he would have lived with his mother for the rest of her life, probably married a sweet little girl who he loved entirely and who scared the shit out of him sometimes, and they'd have had a house full of ridiculously cute children. Whether or not Eddy would have become a mechanic, well, we'll never know, I guess. Eddy would have had a white wedding though, with a lot of flowers, and a lot of happiness, and quite a few "suggestions" from his Mama. Not because he was still really under her thumb, but because he loved her, and he loved his wife, and he loved his kids, and he never minded being bossed about by the people he loved. Or, well, that's how it would have been. But, snake. Mama, in case you were concerned(I am okay) has eight siblings and about a bajillion nieces and nephews of all different ages. She never became part of their pack, but she never lost contact with them either, and they exchanged holiday cards pretty much forever.

James, as you probably noticed, came from a huge family, an indeterminate amount of which was more of the "extended" variety. They're a big family of stereotypes, with guns and chickens and whathaveyou, but they're ridiculously loving, and most of them are actually very accepting and open-minded(and anyone who's not will face Mama's Rolling Pin of Wrath). After the war, James wound up opening a bakery with a boy named Cameron who, when he smiled at James, looked like "a sweet little bundle of cherries." Their love was sort of disgusting, but kind of awesome too. They became a very openly gay-friendly bakery, and any homophobes were politely escorted to the door by James himself. "Politely." James' favorite scent/flavor, previously apple pie( _fucking cliches, every single one of you_ ) turned mysteriously to vanilla and cloves. Because, of course, that was what his boyfriend/eventual spouse/mate smelled like most of all(Well, that and James). All of the Conreys found out about werewolves pretty early on, and accepted it with barely a batted eyelash. James told them a lot of bullshit stories too, but in the middle of the night, sometimes he'd lay awake and tell his husband in a hushed voice about the things he'd seen. The things he'd done. Their bakery maybe became the best bakery for miles(or more) around, and they basically lived happily ever after. James always said it was because his husband was an amazing baker and all their ingredients were as fresh as you could get them, but Cameron says it's James' dimples that keep everyone coming back.

Laura--Laura is who I really wanted to write this for. I feel like she didn't get fleshed out enough, mostly because of the pacing I had going on. Laura was raised by a pretty outdoorsy family, with like 7 brothers and a sister. They bought her princessy stuff, so she stole her brothers' toys and clothes. They tried to exclude her from the "male-bonding" annual rough-camping trips(an addition to the full-family not-so-rough camping trips), so when she was eight she tried to follow and wound up lost in a park. When they found her, she was trying to catch a squirrel, apparently for dinner. They took her roughing every year after that, including quite a few trips where it was just Laura and her oldest brother, to whom she'd always been the closest. Since I addressed religion with everyone else pretty much, I'll mention that her family was pretty much atheist-agnostic. Religion wasn't particularly important to any of them, although she had eight siblings so probably at least one of them "found religion." As for the broadcast they spotted her on, there was a hostage situation, and the pack was on leave. There were crying children, so they were maybe not as careful in some aspects as they maybe should have been. Two of her brothers(eldest included) signed up for the war while she was MIA, a few years apart, but both survived mostly intact.  
She took Stiles' advice by walking up and just knocking on their door and yelling "Surprise!" when it opened. Her oldest brother tackled her, and they wrestled for a while(she kicked his ass), and everything was good. And there was probably some more possibly violent bonding. But it didn't take long to have Laura ensconced on their couch, "where she belonged," drinking hot cocoa and sharing stories(she didn't even have to censor them; her two siblings' experiences in the military were nothing compared to her own, but they'd seen enough and shared freely when they returned). Laura held her niece for the first time, and punched her brother for "making her cry." They took the news that she was a werewolf pretty well and were mostly just happy to have her home. Their next "roughing-it camping trip", Laura totally kicked all their asses completely.  
As for that mate business--Laura never took the ring off her ring finger, and she never found anyone else whose ring she'd want sharing that finger. But she helped raise countless nieces and nephews, and wound up working as a preschool teacher. She never really "moved on," but she was happy. Oh and she also published a series of books about her time in the army, including at least one inclusive guide for which she borrowed Stiles' journals.

 

Since the government offered to pay for it, Laura, Stiles and James wound up flying to a nice midway point for group therapy once a month for about three years, with video-chat sessions over Skype in-between, slowly working one-on-one therapy in. No matter how much therapy they had though, no matter how far apart they were most of the time or all the other difficulties they faced, they never really stopped being codependent, and the Hale and Stilinski packs merged without much fuss, or choice in the matter. Kent wasn't nearly as co-dependent, but he was definitely pack, forever and always, just like Stiles promised, and they saw as much of him and his family as they could.

And for the record, Paula and Dean's baby was a girl, and they named her Hope, because, well, cliche. Her middle name was Fort.  
Also, there were actually two other kids conceived at the fort--both boys. One of them was named for his father with "Kent" as a middle name, and for the other, his parents pulled up Stiles' records to get at his real name; they decided to name him John(the sheriff's name in this verse and all my other 'verses, in case you didn't catch that) with Genim as his middle name(my headcanon of Stiles' middle name).

I didn't give much information on the war on purpose; I didn't want to single anyone out or....anything. But for the record, since I needed at least something to keep in mind, I imagined the war to be in South America--who the USA would be at war with is anyone's guess. Also I'm like 40% sure there's not tigers in South America, but there's probably no sentient jungles either so whatever.  
Oh and yes, this was written with it in mind that the jungle was sentient, or had some sort of "god" or something. They basically tried to walk into a jungle and wound up in some sort of fucked up faerie land instead. Also the lack of mosquitoes made no sense and I'm not going to pretend it did. Let's say it was the flowers or something.

 

There's actually a lot of characters in this fic(which got so completely out of hand I cannot even) that deserve a lot more than they got. Like General Lloyd and the Fort's commander, not to mention Ford and Wayde, and just, a lot more, but if I tried to give all the details I want, someone would hit me. Oh and, as a note, Border Collie, towards the end there? Yeah that was shameless self-indulgence of throwing a long-standing OC in, because why the fuck not. So if you noticed I gave her an extra spotlight, that's because I didn't have to use brainpower for her; I already knew everything about her so I could put details in like sarcastic remarks and whatnot without trying to figure out if it suited her character.

Ugh I brought them up so now I have to mention that Ford already had a wife when he joined the military, and they wound up with two kids, one of which got the middle name Laura. Wayde became a computer programmer and perpetual bachelor until sometime in his thirties when he met a woman who could outsmart him and fell in love with her on the spot. He eventually convinced her to marry him and they adopted a few kids; Wayde became a full-time dad and his wife continued to be smarter than him and, once, she admitted she fell in love with him at the same time he fell in love with her. Just once though.

The Stilinski pack never expanded beyond Stiles, Laura, James, Kent and their families. Laura's would-be fiance(Aaron) was the only one who really got close to being pack, ironically considering he came from a hunter family.

Whoo hopefully that answered questions you may or may not have had?  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There'll be one more chapter to this, which will include(hopefully at least, and possibly more):  
>  ***Sterek***  
>  A meet-and-greet between the two packs(probably at the Conreys' because I'm overly attached)  
> As much BAMF!Stiles as I can mash in without it seeming completely ridiculous  
> Expansion on Stiles' magic and alpha status  
> A possible change to Laura's future without a hubby because I started imagining her and Isaac together  
> Some time with the kids! Stiles has earned it, don't you think?  
> Gratuitous fluff, probably.  
> Lydia nerdgasming over Stiles' journals. And some Stydia!bros time because I have a mighty need.  
> Whatever else pops into my head between now and then(make suggestions in the comments for creatures, if you please; friendly or hostile, obscure or well-known)  
> It'll probably be 1-5k...probably. It shouldn't exceed 10k. Hopefully.  
> I have no idea when I'll finish it though. I have a lot of things that need updates. ^'^


	3. NOT AN EPILOGUE JUST AN UPDATE

~~HI THERE LOVELY FOLKS. So I'm actually just uploading this chapter to declare that I am marking this as complete, because unfortunately I lost the files that I had the intended epilogue in. I may yet rewrite it, but it won't be for a long while if I do, and it's not really necessary to the story anyway. I'm sorry to anyone who was hoping for that epilogue to answer unanswered questions! But hey, if you've got anything in particular you can also send me asks on my[Tumblr](http://smartchicken.tumblr.com) and I'll do my best to answer them! :D If I do give it an epilogue, well, it'll pop up in your email if you're subscribed. And on that note I'm really sorry for giving you this disappointing email if you are subscribed D:  
I hope you enjoyed Stranger Things, even if there isn't an epilogue! I got so much amazing feedback and just, it was such a pleasure to write, even if I feel vaguely disappointed in it now(as you do with works from the past). I'm sort of just constantly warmed by the comments I've gotten on this, and it was definitely those comments that kept me trying to write that epilogue for so long.~~

Fuck all that noise this is getting an epilogue it's just gonna be a while. I'M SORRY I'M SLOW BUT SOMEDAY THERE'LL BE AN EPILOGUE. I KNOW IT'S BEEN THREE FREAKING YEARS BUT MY LIFE IRL IS BIZARRE AND I'M WRITING A MILLION THINGS AT ONCE AND ACK

and it this freaking emailed you all ~update!~ I'm sorry there's no update it's a lie I'm just bad at ao3 and like everything tbh I'm just bad at life Stranger Things is masterpiece I'm a disaster fuck

...-thumbs up- :''D


End file.
